January is named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, endings, transitions, time, duality and passages… (Which of course you knew, and I did too without any recourse to Wikipedia. Honest.) He is often represented by a figure with two faces, one looking forward and the other looking back. This means it’s the perfect time both to reflect on 2024 and to think about what is coming in 2025.
We’ve tried to summarise what made 2024 an exciting year for Nest Insight in the attached video round up. Reflecting personally, there were a number of highlights that really stood out. Earlier in the year, it was fantastic to welcome the then Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Bim Afolami, and his then shadow Tulip Siddiq, to a reception in Westminster to shed a light on the findings from our emergency savings work. Seeing cross-party support for the work and hearing a commitment from the then shadow minister to help address regulatory barriers to the wider adoption of opt-out workplace savings tools felt like a significant moment. Momentum has continued post-election, with the announcement of the financial inclusion committee to develop proposals for a financial inclusion strategy, including a focus on cash savings. And right at the end of 2024, it took on an international (and regal) flavour with a really positive round table hosted by our strategic partners BlackRock, along with Her Majesty Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, in her capacity as the UN High Commissioner’s Special Advocate on Financial Health. We’ve also taken the discussion about how to scale workplace savings tools to employers, including through a great joint event in November in Manchester with the Co-op, featuring supportive comments from the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.
It wasn’t all about emergency savings, though. We shone a light on the lived experience of income volatility through our Real Accounts work, which featured on BBC R4’s You and Yours programme, and then culminated with the publication of our Fluctuation Nation report, launched in November at a reception in the House of Commons, hosted by Torsten Bell MP. We also weighed into the Adequacy debate with our ‘How much is enough?’ report. Both pieces of work have informed our view that what we need is a broad-based focus on household financial security as part of a wider strategy for growth, and not a narrow focus on one part of household finances (such as pension contribution rates) to the exclusion of others.
Which brings us nicely to the forward-looking part of this introduction. 2025 promises to be another exciting year. We will be continuing our work to build the evidence base around workplace emergency savings, and especially how opt-out based approaches can support multiple policy objectives – helping to find a path through the trade-offs in the pensions system between adequacy, inclusivity and simplicity; supporting the goals of the financial inclusion strategy; helping to address the financial resilience aspects of tackling child poverty and economic abuse; and contributing to the ultimate goal of economic growth. In November, we announced a major new grant to also look at a broader range of financial inclusion interventions to support workers alongside, or who lack access to, cash savings tools, and we’ll be ramping that work up this year. We will be publishing the next set of findings from our ongoing work exploring how to increase long-term savings for the self-employed. And we’ll be launching an exploratory project into whether and how closer integration between retirement savings and home ownership could further support households to build financial security.
As we deliver this challenging programme of work, we’re also excited to be growing as a team, and we have some open opportunities now and expect to have more in future so watch this space!
None of what we’ve delivered so far, or the work we’re planning for 2025, is possible without the support of our strategic partners, BlackRock and JPMorganChase; our wider funders which currently include the Money and Pensions Service, the DWP, and the Abrdn Financial Fairness Trust; or of Nest, who established and house Nest Insight and continue to support our work. We are immensely grateful to them all for their support. We also continue to look for new partnerships to help us to deliver our mission of building financial security for low- and moderate-income households, today and into retirement. If you’re interested in working with us, please get in touch.
Will Sandbrook, Managing Director of Nest Insight
