Taipei, Aug. 2 (CNA) Retirees in Taiwan are weak in financial planning to take care of their retiral, according to the results of a survey released by investment consulting firm Schroders Taiwan Wednesday.

Citing a survey on the happiness index for retirees in Taiwan, Schroders Taiwan said that the average score in the index stood at 65.5 points, above the 60 point threshold, but the sub-index for the financial factor only reached 59.2 points.

Meanwhile, the sub-index for the health factor was 73.2 points and the sub-index for the life factor, referring to quality of life, was 66.5 points, both higher than the finance sub-index, Schroders Taiwan said.

Francine Wu (巫慧燕), president of Schroders Taiwan, said that it was no surprise that the local retirement generation performed relatively worse in financial planning, since most of them had a lack of ideas on how to manage their wealth.

There has been a tendency for Taiwan's retirees to depend heavily on the government for their retirement, while they are generally short of sufficient pensions to meet their retirement needs, Wu said.

In particular, Wu said, local female retirees appeared overly dependent on their spouses or their children.

According to the survey, almost 50 percent of respondents in the survey said that they did not have financial planning, while 33 percent of the respondents said they needed someone else's financial support for their retirement, with almost 60 percent of the polled female retirees saying that they depended upon others financially for their retirement.

More than 70 percent of the respondents said that they needed about NT$4.2 million to maintain their life quality after retirement, but Schroders Taiwan said that the expectation was far below what is really needed.

According to Schroders Taiwan, the minimum pension on average in Taiwan will stand at NT$16 million after calculating the average personal income before retirement and annual inflation.

In addition, the survey showed, the sub-index for the finance factor of the respondents in the six municipalities in Taiwan -- Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung -- stood at 59.49 points, beating the 58.52 points recorded by respondents in other cities or counties.

The survey, co-conducted by Schroders Taiwan, CommonWealth magazine and National Chengchi University, collected 1,200 valid questionnaires from retirees aged 55 or older with a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. 

(By Tien Yu-pin and Frances Huang) 
ENDITEM/J