Working into your 70s is becoming acceptable.

More than one-third of UK workers aged between 40 and 60 want the retirement aged increased as they try to fund their lives after leaving employment.

The fourth HSCB Future of Retirement study asked more than 20,000 people across four continents about their retirement plans.

Although most workers surveyed in Europe and North America said they would prefer their governments to enforce additional private savings, among those polled in the UK 35 percent of pre-retirement and 40 percent of post-retirement respondents preferred an increase in retirement age to enforced private savings or raised taxes.

Clive Bannister, Group Managing Director, HSBC Insurance said: "There is a potentially ill-prepared generation, the so called ‘IP' generation, of pragmatic pre-retirees whose expectations of retirement are in danger of not being met unless they stop and consider now the ways in which they need to plan for the second half of their lives.

"Our study reveals that attitudes toward retirement are changing, particularly how long we choose to work, in comparison with those already enjoying retirement. The current generations coming up to retirement, the ones who need to broaden their sources of retirement income, accept that governments may play less of a supporting role in the future and recognise that longer working lives may become a reality."