October 2025
30Oct

Risks escalate for U.S. retirement plans due to unregulated private credit funds and new rules opening them up to retirement savings accounts

When the privately owned auto parts manufacturer First Brands Group earlier this month began to be unable to service its $6.1 billion debt load, the financial press began to pick up on the story—not because it was so unique or important to the U.S. economy, but rather because various financial institutions, including the Swiss banking giant UBS Group AG, were admitting that their exposure to the company was higher and more complicated than they had previously shared, through their...

October 30, 2025
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29Oct

Mexico’s Retirement Savings Grow, Inclusion Gaps Persist

Mexico has experienced a significant shift toward formal savings and greater use of digital financial tools. Between 2021 and 2024, the share of adults with a retirement account rose from 35% to 42%, while adoption of online savings accounts and digital payment solutions tripled, according to the latest joint study by México, ¿Cómo Vamos? and Vanguard. This reflects broader progress in financial inclusion, as the share of adults with at least one formal financial product (savings account, credit, insurance, or AFORE)...

October 29, 2025
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29Oct

US. After 4 Weeks, How the Government Shutdown Is Affecting Retirement Plans

On Tuesday, Day 28 of the government shutdown, federal agencies and departments were unable to make important updates that, if delayed much longer, could affect retirement plans and their participants. The Internal Revenue Service, for example, operated as normal in the early days of the shutdown, but eventually needed to furlough employees and to further reduce operations as the government closure dragged on. As it stands now, the agency is unable to publish critical information that normally would be released in fall....

October 29, 2025
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29Oct

Pensions UK calls for triple lock review amid rising state pension cost

Pensions UK has proposed replacing the triple lock with a more sustainable uprating mechanism once the state pension reaches a “clear adequacy benchmark”, ensuring it provides minimum income standards for a decent retirement. In its response to the government’s third state pension age (SPA) review, the trade body acknowledged the triple lock’s role in protecting pensioners’ incomes in real terms - particularly given ongoing concerns about the adequacy of retirement outcomes from defined contribution (DC) schemes. However, Pensions UK pointed to Office...

October 29, 2025
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29Oct

Ghana. Gov’t urged to raise salaries and extend retirement age to 65

“Someone is receiving as high as GH₵140,000 monthly pension, while others get as little as GH₵400. For such people, nothing will change even in 200 years if they were to live that long, because their salaries were too low and they didn’t adequately plan for retirement,” he lamented. He explained that improving public sector salaries would not only ensure a decent standard of living for workers but also guarantee better pension benefits after retirement. Dr. Sefa Twum also proposed that Ghana’s...

October 29, 2025
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28Oct

US. Are Workers Warming Up to In-Plan Annuities?

“Today, 40 percent of retirees have access to a pension plan. The numbers go down substantially each generation,” Hodgens says. “Just 24 percent of Gen X workers have access to a pension, and only 16 percent of millennials will have a pension.” He and other financial professionals say recent federal legislation focused on retirement security could help fill the pension gap. The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, passed in 2019, and SECURE 2.0, which followed three...

October 28, 2025
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28Oct

How China’s aging boom is turned into an investment story

With 300 million seniors and a shrinking workforce, China's 'silver economy' is emerging as one of its most durable new growth engines Residents of a community for senior citizens on the outskirts of Beijing. Retired factory supervisor Zhang Meihua starts every morning with a brisk walk around a new riverside park in Chengdu, tracking her steps on a smartwatch made by Huawei. "I never cared about gadgets before," she said. "But my children worry if I don't share my health data....

October 28, 2025
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28Oct

Rising birth rates no longer tied to economic prosperity

Fertility rates began falling in most of the world starting in the last century. By the 1970s, the U.S. had dipped under the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, a trend that has continued on a declining slope. In her new working paper, “The Downside of Fertility,” Claudia Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics, takes a deeper dive into the cultural changes around gender that are driving down fertility rates. The economic historian and 2023 Nobel laureate introduced a model in a previous...

October 28, 2025
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28Oct

DC Plan Sponsors Target Wellness, Compliance and Lower Costs

When defined contribution plan sponsors were asked to name the top three priorities over the next 12 months, expanding financial wellness, ensuring regulatory compliance, and reducing plan costs were among the top responses. In fact, 4 in 10 (39%) respondents cited expanding their financial wellness programs as their No. 1 focus, underscoring the importance of ensuring good participant outcomes to plan sponsors. And while financial wellness was the most popular top priority overall, nearly as many respondents are focused on...

October 28, 2025
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27Oct

More than a third of UK workers face retirement poverty amid weak engagement

More than a third of UK workers - equivalent to around 11.6 million people - are on course to fall short of covering their basic needs in retirement, research from Scottish Widows has revealed. The insurer’s latest report, Retirement Realities: Unlocking the Workplace Benefits, found that while auto-enrolment has brought millions into pension saving, contribution levels and engagement remained far too low to deliver adequate outcomes for most workers. Drawing on surveys of 1,000 senior decision-makers responsible for workplace pensions and 2,000...

October 27, 2025
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