The coronavirus pandemic has caused a lot of issues globally including how people save their money.
Wealth management giant Quilter surveyed 1,000 UAE residents and found that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused more than half of people in the country to reduce how much money they save or stop saving completely.
When respondents were asked whether they had been able to save more during the coronavirus pandemic, just 13% said they were saving more.
More than a quarter (27%) said that they had lost their income and therefore could no longer save and a further 25% said that the pandemic had caused them to save less than before.
Some 43% of respondents aged 61 to 70 said they had lost their income during the pandemic, while this was true for 31% of people aged 40-50 and 31% of those aged 51 to 60.
Just 15% of respondents said that the pandemic had not changed how much they saved and a further 11% said that in the early days of the pandemic they had managed to save more.
Impact
Brendan Dolan, global distribution director of Quilter International, said: “This research highlights how badly the pandemic has impacted people’s savings habits. Millions of people have experienced a fall in income and the economy suffered a huge economic shock when the UAE went into lockdown.
“It is therefore no surprise that more than half of people had to readjust their saving habits to cope in these unusual and difficult circumstances.
“It is times like these where financial advice comes into its own and shows its value by making sure that these short-term shocks don’t derail your long-term financial plans.
“Sorting through finances is complicated and as hard as we try to be rational there is a level of emotion involved which can hinder your decisions especially during stressful circumstances such as this pandemic.”
