The government just created a coalition to fix UK savings. Sync is a founding member.
The statistics on UK savings have been cited so many times they've started to lose their weight. One in ten working adults have no savings. A further two in ten have less than £1,000. Thirteen million people are classified as having low financial resilience. These sadly describe the majority of the UK workforce.
The response to date has been broadly inadequate; financial education campaigns, awareness initiatives, and a persistent assumption that people are not saving because they don't understand savings. However, as we keep saying, the problem is structural, not educational. The most important experiment in UK personal finance in the last decade (pension auto-enrolment) demonstrates exactly what structural change can do.
That lesson has not been lost on government.
What the Coalition is, and why it matters
The National Coalition for Workplace Savings has been established as part of the government's Financial Inclusion Strategy, initiated by HM Treasury and convened by MaPS, Nest Insight and The Investment and Savings Alliance (TISA). The mission is to increase the number of UK employers offering workplace savings schemes, and drive up participation among employees who are currently not saving.
The Financial Conduct Authority has issued a statement in support. HM Treasury is encouraging adoption. And on 16 June 2026, the Coalition launches publicly in London with Rachel Blake MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Financial Health Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands in attendance.
The evidence of the impact of opt-out and autosave models (approaches that enrol employees automatically unless they choose not to save) is compelling. In Nest Insight's trials, participation at SUEZ went from 1% to 48% by switching to opt-out. At Bupa and Co-op, the figure rose from 15% to 68%.
Opt-out is not the only path to high participation, but it is the highest-impact one. Behavioural design, frictionless onboarding, and an experience that removes every unnecessary step can meaningfully close the gap in an opt-in environment - and that is exactly the model Sync operates today. The mechanism still matters enormously: a sign-up process that takes seconds and removes cognitive load at every stage is a fundamentally different proposition to one that doesn't. The Coalition's point stands, though. When saving is the default, more people save. It is the most robust finding in the behavioural economics of personal finance.
Why Sync is a founding member
Sync has been invited to join as a founding member. The Coalition's model (payroll-integrated, automatic, frictionless) is the model Sync has been building since the beginning.
Payroll is the most powerful intervention point in anyone's financial life. Every employed person in the UK, at least once a month, receives a payment. And the moment just before any bill is paid, or before any spending decision is made, is where savings behaviour can be shaped most effectively. Not by educating the people or telling them to save more but by making the saving happen automatically. They can then choose to withdraw, should they wish.
The research on this is consistent and substantial. When friction is removed, participation rates explode. The people who benefit most from this are the majority of the workforce who intend to save, know they should save, and still don't, because life intervenes between intention and action.
Being part of the founding cohort of a government-backed initiative of this scale that reflects exactly the structural argument Sync was built on is something we’re very proud of, and will dramatically help us on our mission to “help more people, save more”.
What comes next
The Coalition's public launch is 16 June. The formal recruitment of employer signatories is underway now, with implementation and optimisation activity running through the second half of 2026 and beyond.
The direction of travel is clear: workplace savings is moving from a niche benefit to a mainstream expectation, backed by regulatory support and government intent.
The window to be part of the founding cohort is open now. You can sign up here.
👉 Sync is a founding member of the National Coalition for Workplace Savings. To find out more about bringing Payroll Savings to your organisation, book a demo.
