Bermudians are worried about their ability to afford retirement, an expert from HSBC said yesterday.

Renee Bullock-Cann, HSBC Bermuda head of retail banking, wealth management and marketing, said that a worldwide survey by the bank registering concern over the cost of retirement was in line with the bank’s experience in Bermuda.

She added: “A number of our customers have shared their concerns regarding whether they will be in a position to retire within their desired time frame.

“These sentiments align with what the latest Future of Retirement: Healthy new beginnings survey results are telling us, where one in five people globally are concerned about their ability to retire fully.”

Ms Bullock-Cann said: “Clearly understanding each person’s retirement aspirations, such as when they ideally wish to begin this phase of their lives, while accounting for extended healthcare costs as people live longer, are just two of the considerations that, when planned appropriately, can help allay an individual’s concerns regarding retirement.”

She added: “We want this phase of our customers’ lives to be one where financial barriers are not preventing them from retiring in the way in which they aspire to.”

The HSBC survey, which covered 18,000 people in 17 countries, found that 65 per cent of those aged 45 and over would like to retire within in the five years, but 38 per cent said they would be unable to do so.

And 18 per cent of people surveyed predicted that financial pressures meant they would never be able to fully retire.

The figure is almost double the proportion of those that said the same when the last survey was carried out in 2015.

Argentina, at 78 per cent, logged the highest number of people aged 45 and over who wanted to quit work in the next five years.

The South American country was followed by France on 77 per cent, China, 75 per cent and the UK, also on 75 per cent.

Of those who said they would like to retire, but cannot, more than 80 per cent said it was because they could not afford to.

More than half of those aged 45-plus who want to retire in the next five years would do so to spend more time on travel or other interests, while 44 per cent said they wanted to spend more time with their families.

Almost one in three, 29 per cent, said they were tired of the routine of work and nearly a quarter, 23 per cent, said work had a bad effect on their mental and/or physical health.

Working people over the age of 45 who have a partner who is already retired were most likely to want to quit work in the next five years — 81 per cent — with a total of 39 per cent saying they wanted to do so to join their partner in retirement.

A total of 64 per cent of those surveyed said they could not retire when they wanted due to a lack of savings, while 32 per cent said they had dependants and 24 per cent said they had a lot of debt to pay off.