A survey carried out for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has found that HMRC app financial embarrassment is holding back a significant portion of the UK population: more than one in four people (27%) say they lack basic knowledge about money matters and feel too embarrassed to ask for help.
The survey, which covered more than 5,200 people in February and March and was carried out by Censuswide, also found that more than half of respondents (56%) felt they were not prepared for life’s financial milestones. These are moments such as starting work, buying a home, or approaching retirement, moments when getting money decisions wrong can have lasting consequences.
Pensions and State Forecasts: The Knowledge Gap
The survey found a third of people (33%) wish they had learned about pensions earlier in life. A further 10% said they had never checked their state pension forecast at all. That is a gap worth paying attention to, given the sums involved in retirement planning and the difficulty of making up lost ground later on.
At the same time, pension participation among employees has been rising steadily. According to GOV.UK’s Family Resources Survey, the share of employees participating in a pension scheme grew from 53% in 2013 to 2014 to 79% in 2023 to 2024, an increase of 26 percentage points over the decade. More people are saving, in other words, but many still feel they do not understand what they are saving into or what they will receive.
Checking your state pension forecast is one practical step anyone can take to get a clearer picture. It shows what you are currently on track to receive from the state, based on your National Insurance record, and it takes only a few minutes.
HMRC App Financial Embarrassment: What the App Offers
HMRC says its app is designed to help people access exactly this kind of information without having to ask anyone. In July, more than three million people visited the app, which gives users instant access to their tax code, Pay As You Earn (PAYE) details, employment history, self-assessment record, Child Benefit information, and state pension forecast. It also includes budgeting and saving tips, and users can retrieve and save their National Insurance number to their digital wallet.
Usage figures published by the Data in Government Blog give a sense of how the app has grown. There were more than 4.2 million downloads in 2025. Nearly 2.4 million people viewed their state pension forecast that year, up from 1.7 million in 2024, an increase of close to 664,000 users. The Child Benefit area of the app was used by almost 960,000 people in 2025, around 160,000 more than the year before.
Those numbers suggest that, whatever the barriers people face, a growing number are finding the app a useful way in. Viewing a pension forecast or checking a tax code does not require anyone to admit to a gap in their knowledge or to ask a potentially awkward question of a friend, employer, or adviser.
Myrtle Lloyd, HMRC’s chief customer officer, said the app helps people to be informed about tax and money matters.
The HMRC app financial embarrassment issue points to something the figures reflect: knowing where to look matters as much as having the information itself. For many people, the barrier is not inability but discomfort. Tools that let someone check their own records privately, at a time that suits them, sidestep that barrier in a way that a phone call or face-to-face conversation does not.
The survey’s finding that 56% of people felt unprepared for financial milestones suggests that discomfort around money is not a niche problem. It is widespread, and the demand for accessible, low-pressure financial information appears, by the app’s own download and engagement figures, to be real and rising.
