Pensions and investment company Aegon has launched a Financial Wellbeing tool aimed at helping 45m UK adults assess their personal financial wellbeing and how to make improvements.

The new tool is based on Aegon’s recent Financial Wellbeing Index which analyses people’s financial health and the influence that mindset plays in influencing financial wellbeing and Financial Planning decision-making. 

The report found that more than 19m people (36%) in the UK are struggling with their financial wellbeing and that just 16% of the population (around 8.6m people) combine healthy finances and a positive money mindset.

Some 12%, or nearly 6.5m people, scored poorly in terms of financial wellbeing and financial mindset.

With this in mind, Aegon believes 5 in 6 of the population, or 45m people, could take action to improve their financial wellbeing. This view has inspired the launch of the tool to everyone, not just Aegon customers, the firm says.

Aegon’s methodology places equal weight on money factors like income levels, budgeting skills, affordability of debt and mindset factors like peoples’ willingness or ability to picture their future self, put in place a financial plan or think carefully about what makes them happy. The firm says it is mindsets that often show most room for improvement.

The animated tool asks 10 questions taken from the larger Aegon Financial Wellbeing survey. 

The tool uses 5 questions on money and 5 questions on mindset to draw conclusions about the financial wellbeing score of the individual. 

Once the individual has responded to each of the questions a score is displayed, benchmarked against an average score and showing their current financial wellbeing strengths and areas for improvement and outlining the steps they need to consider to improve. 

Aegon will be encouraging employers to use the tool in workplaces with employees to help improve employee financial wellbeing. 

The tool is available here:  www.aegon.co.uk/wellbeing 

Steven Cameron, pensions Director at Aegon, said: “What we’ve found is that for most people, the biggest improvement they could make to financial wellbeing is to reframe the way they think about money – their ‘mindset’. It’s not always possible to make quick changes to your level of income or savings but by thinking about what sort of future you’re working towards, and the steps you’ll need to get there or by making more realistic social comparisons, you can make big strides towards a better relationship with your money.”