£156,000,000,000 is a lot of money

This is the total liabilities of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) pension fund. Amazingly it has jumped by a third in the last 24 months.

The total liabilities of UK's public sector pensions now exceed £960bn – compared to around £800bn for all private-sector schemes.

So what have these huge numbers got to do with the 50-plus?

Well it is like this; the UK divides into two groups of people. Those who work for the Government and who receive a guaranteed pension and can retire when they are 60 years old. There are these other people, who work in the private sector, who have to fund their own pensions and who look set to retire 8 (yes eight) later than their government employed neighbours.

This is patently nonsense and will all end in tears but in the short term it means that marketers should start to think about segmenting their older customers by their employment. In some parts of the UK over 50% of people are employed by the Government.

It would be worth considering if this is a useful segmentation factor. Dick Stroud