Since the dawn of auto-enrolment in 2012, the narrative from some in the corridors of power is that we have a pensions system which works for everybody. Not quite. While more than 10 million more workers have started saving over the past eight years, we still have a long way to go before we can argue with a straight face that the playing field for retirement saving is a level one.

We now have more evidence about who the under-pensioned are, with much rightly having been said about the yawning gender pensions gap, leaving women worse off than men in retirement. And our new analysis has found that the average pensioner from an ethnic minority background is £3,350 a year worse off than other pensioners.

This income divide amounts to 24.4 per cent per annum and widens further for a female pensioner from an ethnic minority background who is 51.4 per cent worse off than a male white pensioner on average. The causes of the ethnicity pension gap are complex, but largely lie in labour market factors, such as lower average earnings, variable employment rates, and the greater likelihood of ethnic minority workers being self-employed.

However, pension policy also plays a part, specifically the rules which govern contributory workplace and state pension systems. The state pension income gap is £600 per year, with differences in workplace and individual pension savings and entitlements making up the rest of the £3,350 difference.

Read more @I news