Three quarters of self-employed not making pension contributions

This equates to 3.3 million self-employed workers who aren't making any pension contributions.

During the same period, median current pension wealth for employees came in at £33,000 compared with £21,000 for the self-employed.

Sean McCann, chartered financial planner at NFU Mutual, said: “These official figures show three in every four self-employed people aren’t investing into a pension. That’s around 3.5 million adults who are missing out on a big helping hand from the Government to boost their retirement savings. While auto-enrolment is making it easier than ever for employed people to save for their retirement, many in self-employment put off saving into a pension in favour of investing in their own business.

“The tax relief alone is a great incentive to make pension contributions, but many entrepreneurs don’t realise that they can use their pension fund to invest directly in commercial property or land, which their business can then occupy and still benefit from the tax advantages a pension gives. These latest statistics suggest many, many self-employed people may be missing a trick and could be facing having to extend their working lives by years, if not decades.”