Vulnerability is not a niche issue

For more than two decades, Scottish Widows’ research has looked at the different challenges people face when saving for their future. Our Retirement Report has tracked the nation’s preparedness for retirement since 2005, while our long-running Women and Retirement Report has shone a light on the particular barriers women face, from the gender pension gap to the impact of career breaks and caring responsibilities. Across that work, our focus has stayed the same: to better understand where people are being left behind, and what needs to change to help more people achieve a comfortable and financially secure retirement.

Over that time, one thing has become increasingly clear – that there is no such thing as a typical retirement journey. Health challenges can interrupt work, a bereavement or relationship breakdown can change household finances almost overnight, while caring responsibilities can mean taking time away from a career. For others, low or unpredictable income can make saving for the future feel a long way down the list when there are bills to pay today.

These circumstances are often categorised under the broad term ‘vulnerability’, which, by the FCA’s definition includes those people whose life events, health, resilience or capability make them particularly susceptible to harm.

But it would be wrong to think of this as something affecting a minority or distinct group of people. The FCA’s Financial Lives research finds that 26.4 million UK adults have characteristics of vulnerability, which is equivalent to around half of the adult population. To top this off, our own research finds that 62% of UK adults have at least one vulnerability – a finding that shows for many, vulnerability is a part of everyday life.

Vulnerability is not just a fixed state. People can move in and out of it throughout their lives, and different challenges – whether bereavement, sudden financial loss, or health challenges – can overlap or be experienced all at the same time. This means vulnerability is better understood as a sliding scale that can change as people’s circumstances do.

That matters enormously when we think about pensions, because retirement saving happens over the course of our lives. A system built around the assumption of continuous employment, stable earnings and consistently good financial health simply doesn’t reflect the lives people actually lead.

Part One of our Retirement Report this year looked at the scale of the problem. Our National Retirement Forecast found that 31% of UK adults, around 12.2 million people, are on course for a retirement income far below the minimum standard. While that was an improvement on 2025, the picture underneath remains uneven, with vulnerable groups among those most at risk.

For those experiencing physical or mental health conditions that impact their day-to-day lives, we see that fully half (50%) face pension poverty, which is double the rate of the rest of the population (27%).”

The challenge, then, is not simply how we support a fixed group of ‘vulnerable people’ – but how we build a system that works for people no matter their background or circumstances change, even if they change unexpectedly.