Nearly half of millennials would invest part of their pension in cryptocurrencies if they could, research suggests.
Forty percent of people born between 1981 and the mid-1990s would like cryptocurrencies in their pensions savings. The asset class has less appeal for older generations – for example, only 7% of the baby-boomer generation felt the same way.
Other generations – known as ‘generation X’ and ‘the silent generation’ – would add cryptocurrencies to their pension portfolios in 10% of cases, according to the CoreData Research, which surveyed 500 UK retail investors.
Yet the report also found investors had concerns about investing pension pots in cryptocurrencies and other new areas, such as medicinal cannabis. Almost half said their biggest concern was about investing in a sector that could be unregulated and open to fraud, while more than a third worried that the risks involved were not yet understood.
Andrew Inwood, founder and principal of CoreData, said: “These findings show investors have an appetite for more alternative and exotic investments but also recognise the risks.
“But cryptocurrencies are off the menu for now – these are largely unregulated and volatile assets and the FCA has already sounded an alarm bell over the risk they pose to retail investors.”
Overall, the most popular alternative pension investment was gold or silver, with 45% of respondents saying they would include the precious metals in their retirement schemes.
About a quarter of respondents would invest their pension in frontier markets (24%) and rare earth metals (23%), while about one in five opted for farmland or timber and medicinal cannabis.
Buy-to-let residential property were also seen favourably among investors across age groups, with 33% overall seeing a place for the asset class in pension portfolio allocation.
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