February 2026

Pension Funding Ratios Build on 2025 Gains in January

Pension finances started 2026 strong, as the funded status of the largest 100 corporate defined benefit plans rose to 109% in January from 108.1% at year-end 2025, according to Milliman’s Pension Funding Index. January’s rise built on gains made in the last three quarters of 2025. Milliman’s PFI showed funding dipped to its lowest point of last year in March 2025 (102.7%) before increasing for 10 consecutive months to reach its current level. Both model plans tracked by October Three Consulting...

Nigeria. Ogun govt clears pension backlog, boosts retiree welfare

The Ogun State Government has announced the clearance of pension and gratuity arrears owed to workers who retired between 2012 and 2020, reaffirming its commitment to the welfare of retirees. The disclosure was made on Tuesday by the Economic Adviser and Commissioner for Finance, Dapo Okubadejo, during a media briefing organised by the Ogun State Ministry of Budget and Planning. Okubadejo explained that the backlog was linked to the Defined Benefits Scheme, under which retirees receive monthly pensions, noting that the current...

UK workers pessimistic about retirement prospects

Workers in the UK are optimistic about all aspects of their personal and financial lives, except their plans for retirement, analysis from Fidelity International has revealed. Fidelity’s Global Sentiment Survey showed that overall levels of optimism among UK employees had risen to 54 per cent in 2025, up from 52 per cent in 2024 and 48 per cent in 2023. At least 50 per cent of respondents rated each aspect of their finances, working lives, and health as ‘good’, other than retirement planning. Just...

Why Is Japan’s Population Decreasing?

Japan’s population has been declining steadily since 2005 primarily because of a decrease in births, which have consistently been lower than the number of deaths per year. The birth rate in Japan dropped from about 19 per 1,000 people in 1970 to just 6 in 2023. Until the mid-1970s, the total fertility rate remained above the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, the threshold needed for population stability, but that rate declined to a record low of 1.15 in 2024. Another factor has been a gradual shift...

Sri Lanka ends parliamentary pensions to prune perks for politicians

Sri Lanka’s parliament abolished pensions for all legislators and their widows on Tuesday, in line with a government pledge to prune the perks of politicians. “When people see the quality of debate and what members say in this House, they don’t think MPs deserve a pension,” Justice Minister Harsana Nanayakkara told parliament as it voted to stop pensions with immediate effect. The leftist government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake repealed the 49-year-old Parliamentary Pensions Act just months after withdrawing housing, vehicles and...

EU looks to pensions and capital markets to unlock private funding for defence and tech

EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, 17 February 2026, are again returning to an old problem with new urgency: how to persuade Europeans to move more of their household savings out of bank deposits and into longer-term investment, and how to do so across borders in a fragmented financial system. The discussion sits under the European Commission’s “Savings and Investments Union” (SIU) banner, which is presented as the successor framework to the long-running Capital Markets Union project. In...

UK. Industry urged to ‘break cycle of failed ideas’ on pensions adequacy

The pensions industry risks “sleepwalking into another generation of under-saving” unless it experiments with new approaches to member engagement, People's Pension has warned. The master trust argued that traditional, well-intentioned efforts to boost pensions adequacy had delivered limited success in recent years and called on the industry to support bolder, more innovative engagement strategies. In particular, the scheme urged greater focus on Generation Z, which it identified as the cohort most likely to opt out of pensions but with the longest...

Kenya. RBA Cracks Down on KSh72bn in Unpaid Pension Contributions with Stricter Penalties

The Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) has launched a tough new drive to recover more than KSh72 billion in unpaid pension contributions, introducing stricter penalties and enforcement measures aimed at institutions that have deducted retirement deductions from workers’ pay but failed to remit them to pension schemes. The crackdown responds to a sharp increase in unremitted pension contributions, a problem that has eroded confidence in Kenya’s retirement benefits system and left millions of contributors at risk. RBA data show that...

Brain expert recommends learning new skills, taking on new challenges for healthy aging

When her husband of more than half a century died Maureen Caraco was left with a gaping hole in her life. Despite being in her early 80s and struggling to navigate her grief, she enrolled in a law degree. "I was pretty much at a loss as to what to do," Ms Caraco said. "It was really fantastic going to university, being with people who had the same purpose in life and the same interest, and I just felt so at home...

US. 1/3 Withdraw 401(k) Balances After Job Changes—What Is Driving This Trend?

Retirement savers are generally putting more into their 401(k) accounts these days, but much of the money Americans are saving for their future doesn’t end up lasting until then. That's because a large portion of employees withdraw their 401(k) balance in a lump sum when they leave a job, rather than rolling it over to their new employer or into another account, or leaving their balance where it is. One-third of those who have Vanguard-administered 401(k) plans and left a job did this, according to...