Retirement plan return
April 27th, 2010 by Richard Aucock
BUSINESS owners are now once again able to think about retirement as the economy comes out of recession.
There is still a long way to go though, warns Clifton Asset Management.
77 percent of owners reckon their retirement is longer away now than it was a year ago. Sounds disastrous? Well, this is actually an improvement – 3 months ago, 4 in 5 owners were delaying plans.
The chief reason for this delay, reckon 55 percent of owners, are tougher trading conditions. A fall in property and pension values is far lower down the list – less than 1 in 4 owners cite this as the biggest reason for their delay.
Neil Greenaway, MD at Clifton Asset Management, said: ‘How people view their retirement prospects is a crucial part of our survey, so a fall – albeit small – in the number of business owners who see retirement moving further away has to be good news.
‘We are now officially out of recession and no doubt this affects how people see their retirement prospects, although the wide variations between different parts of the country highlight how some regions are performing better than others.’
The picture is indeed inconsistent across the UK – 9 in 10 businesses in the East Midlands reckon they now have longer to wait until they can retire. In the South West though, that figure is 68 percent.
‘Our latest survey is confirmation, if it were needed, that the recovery will be a long, drawn-out and patchy process,’ said Greenaway.
‘At the end of last year, just over half of our respondents said they believed a proper recovery was 12 months or more away – a figure which has risen to two-thirds this time…’
And as few surveys can escape touching on the forthcoming General Election, the CAM survey also quizzed owners on who’ll win power in May. 67 percent said Conservative; 8 percent said Labour.