There has been a lot of interest in our recently published Defined Contribution (DC) Retirement Readiness Report. In case you missed it, last month we released our analysis of the main factors affecting outcomes at retirement for the approximately 38,000 members of our 1,400 DC schemes*. The key findings of our analysis were:

• The average contribution rate (including employer and employee contributions) for a DC member is 10.3% of salary *
• This level of contributions will provide members with a replacement income of 17% of their salary in retirement, or 43% of salary when the State Pension is also taken into account*
• However, this replacement rate drops for those on higher salaries and our analysis shows that this higher-earning group are the most likely to be facing significant shortfalls at retirement
• Starting in a pension plan early, when coupled with a meaningful contribution, is important in order to build up an adequate pension fund at retirement
• Most DC schemes now offer a lifestyle strategy as their default investment choice and over 70% of DC members under the age of 40 are invested in lifestyle strategies*

*Source: Irish Life Corporate Business

You can read the report in full here.

Below you can find a variety of links to how the report was analysed in various media:

- RTE
- Irish Times
- Business World
- Irish Independent
- Irish Examiner
- Irish Times

You may also have heard Damien Fadden, Director of Sales, speaking on the Newstalk breakfast show, you can listen back here, the interview starts at about 9 minutes in.