The current Government has kept pensions very much in the news. Hardly a day goes by without someone commenting somewhere about how retirement income is to be funded for everyone yet to sail off into the great wide world.

I recently had the privilege of hearing Steve Webb, the current Pensions Minister. It is rare for me to use the word "privilege" when discussing a Member of Parliament and even rarer to urge everyone to listen to what this one has to say.

Steve Webb is one of that rare breed of MPs who tell it as it is and appear to have a real handle on the task in hand. Discussing the Government's roll-out from October this year of auto-enrolment and National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) he urged financial advisers to get involved.

With automatic enrolment of employees into a workplace pension scheme where one does not already exist, and the compulsory employer contribution, Webb sees this as a life-changing opportunity for the many that do not contribute at all to a pension scheme. This will be a sea change for those businesses and their employees (even if only one employee) that do not as yet offer any kind of pension savings scheme.

All employers are urged to seek out a qualified adviser or IFA business to ensure that they plan and are prepared for October and thereafter. You can opt for NEST and be under the Government's terms or you can initiate your own scheme. Whatever the choice, there will have to be a scheme and failure to comply could be costly, aside from the costs of actually setting up a scheme and contributing to it.

Few employees, private or public, actually understand their pension scheme or have much idea what kind of income it will provide in retirement. Even fewer personal pension plan holders have any idea.

To the latter, I suggest that you ask yourself a number of questions. How many plans do I have? Who are the providers? What has your money actually been invested in? How much are you paying in fees every year? Are the selected investments growing by more or less than should be realistically expected? Are they growing at all? If they are growing, will it provide enough to live on?

Or are your plans a total mystery to you?

Auto-enrolment will become compulsory for those that are employed and have no pension scheme, but for the self-employed there will be no compulsion to save for retirement. With the State Pension age receding into the distance, the need for everyone to up their game and look at what will be needed has never been more important. Answers to the above questions are vital if you already own plans and obtaining answers may not be all that easy. Many of the original pension plan providers, typically insurance companies, no longer trade openly. Annual statements will still be issued, but obtaining actual advice and comparing one with another is likely to be difficult.

The only people that can help in this kind of situation will be independent advisers. With your authority they can ask the right questions and provide ongoing solutions. For new pension savers they will also ask the right questions as regards your future needs and with the onset of auto-enrolment it will mean that many employees who already have a personal plan may have to rethink their own provision.

Retirement income is not something that can be put on the back burner; 2012 will be a make-or-break year for many employers and it could mean the year in which pension savings actually became a fact of life for most rather than just the few.