More than 13 million people in the UK have never reviewed their pension plan, according to new research from Baring Asset Management, but it is vitally important for clients to keep tabs on their pot to help prevent a serious shortfall in later life.

Attitudes many people showed towards retirement planning have to change, such as keeping track of pensions and investigating options. It is important that people are keeping a check on how their preparations for the future are progressing and realise at the earliest possible moment that they have got a potential problem – when they are able to do something about it. If you realise a couple of years before you retire, it can be a bit too late.

People are losing out by not keeping their records up to date with their pension provider. People move addresses and do not notify pension providers, so they are not receiving their annual statement. Accessibility was not the only hurdle to pension awareness; apathy and a lack of trust also played key roles. In the past few years, the shocks we have had in the equity market, coupled with the adverse tax changes that have been made by Gordon Brown have generally made people more wary about pensions than they were before.

Barings’ research found that 13.6 million people in the UK had never reviewed their pension plan and a further 2.2 million had not done so in the last five years. And the results showed gender differences when it came to choosing funds, with 53% of women not knowing if they were in the default fund compared to 29% men. Marino Valensise, chief investment officer at Barings, said the low number of individuals reviewing their pension on a regular basis was ‘concerning’ and could spell a shortfall for those that were not lucky