With life expectancy in the developed world rising sharply and state pensions withering on the vine, it may seem a strange question to ask, but are pensions still needed?

The question was prompted by a startling statistic at a recent UK pensions conference attended by CoreData Research UK.

During the conference, a representative of the Barclays staff pension fund said a recent staff survey found that employees who were not in the staff pension scheme had just as positive a view of their retirement prospects as employees who were.

Quite how the first group intend to pay for their retirement is unclear. As the Barclays representative said: “They are confident that will get a pension even if they haven’t joined the company scheme.”

While this level of blind optimism is worrying, it is not surprising given the general public ignorance on pension matters. Another pension expert recently told CoreData that he overheard a conversation on the lines of, ‘my pension is costing me £100 a month’ followed by ‘Oh, mine’s much cheaper, I’m paying £50 a month – you must be getting ripped off’. In this case, it was clear the individual had not made the connection between what they were paying in and what they might get out.

Given this level of ignorance, it is not surprising that employers, pension consultants and government officials are looking forward to auto-enrolment and other automated measures, such as default funds and ‘save more tomorrow’ automatic contribution increases, to help steer apathetic staff into pension saving.

All of this leads to a question about whether a strategy of getting millions of people to save relatively small amounts in a financial product they don’t understand and would not willingly choose for themselves is a good idea.

Putting fluoride into the water supply might improve our teeth, but will quasi-compulsory pensions help UK citizens prepare for their old age and retirement?

The do-gooder instinct is to say yes, as more people will build up their own pension pots and this must be a good thing. Against this, these savings could, under the UK welfare system, in some cases count against means-tested benefits, meaning the individuals caught in this trap are not better off.

Many people will also assume that their relatively low contribution levels in DC schemes will be sufficient for their pension and may then get a severe shock close to retirement. And at retirement, annuity rates could be poor for individuals and they still have to decide which annuity, if any, they should buy.

Finally, the administration costs and complexity of the new national pension system will be horrendous, with millions of small pots likely to be created which then sit somewhere in the system for years as people move jobs or opt-out.

Perhaps we should accept occupational pensions worked best in the era of a job for life. Then, a company would get the benefit of retaining staff and employees could better envisage their retirement, as they saw older colleagues retiring and their own path to retirement at the same employer.

In today’s more mobile world, retirement seems a far more distant event, making it harder for younger workers to grasp the need for a pension for their older self.

Perhaps we should turn pensions into saving plans, with more access before retirement in order to make pensions more understandable and attractive to those who don’t currently understand them, or the need for them.