August 2026
07Aug

Deaccumulation in India: The Role of Equity, Debt and Annuities in Retirement Income

By Ravi Saraogi & Pushpinder Singh Framework: We adopt a partial annuitisation framework in which a fraction of the retirement corpus is used to purchase an immediate life annuity, while the remainder is retained in a self-managed portfolio. Using a bootstrap Monte Carlo approach with Indian equity, debt and inflation data, we simulate retirement paths across four portfolio allocations, three annuitisation levels (0, 20 and 40 per cent) and four annuity payout rates (6, 7, 8 and 9 per cent)....

August 7, 2026
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July 2026
17Jul

Inclusive Pensions for an Aging World: Evidence and Strategies for Engaging Informal Workers

By Clément Joubert, Jessica Meckler, Simrin Makhija & Lili Vessereau This Working Paper reviews how different countries have designed pension schemes for informal workers. It focuses on contributory schemes for the “missing middle”: informal workers who have sufficiently stable incomes to save for old age but lack access to suitable pension options. The paper draws upon public documentation and literature on how to target and scale pension schemes for informal sector workers. The world is experiencing a demographic shift in which populations...

July 17, 2026
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17Jul

Extending Pension Coverage to the Informal Sector in Africa

By Melis Guven  The coverage of pension systems in the Africa region is limited to the small segment of the population in the formal sector. Coverage is thin partly because traditional contributory pension schemes are not responding to the needs of the informal sector. As a result, a large share of the region’s adult population has no access to contributory pension schemes during their working lives. This means they will not be eligible for a pension. It also means the...

July 17, 2026
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June 2026
26Jun

Avoiding the ‘pink pound’ blind spot

By Scottish Widows  While Pride celebrations carried on around the UK, the reality is that ‘pink finances’ remain in dire straits. It was a common trope not that long ago that this cohort of society was more likely to be more affluent than average. But the reality is very different. In fact, the challenges facing LGBTQ+ people are vast, and this group is much more likely to have a range of different vulnerabilities. To ensure that they continue to deliver the...

June 26, 2026
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12Jun

What Do Prospective Teachers Retirees’ Fear about Retirement?

By Jaquiline Amani This qualitative study explored prospective teacher retirees’ perceived fears about retirement and identified key drivers of retirement anxiety. Data were collected through focus group discussions with 22 teachers from two regions of Tanzania. The participants were purposively selected from public schools and had ten years or less remaining before reaching voluntary or mandatory retirement age. Thematic analysis revealed that teachers’ fear of retirement was shaped by multiple, interconnected factors, including anticipated social exclusion, income reduction and financial...

June 12, 2026
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April 2026
17Apr

How Will AI Affect Financial Planning for Retirement?

By Luke Delorme  I recently attended a financial advisor conference focused on artificial intelligence. Drawing on what I learned, this post summarizes my thoughts on how AI may reshape financial planning for retirement savers. Spoiler alert: I think it has great potential to help both advisors and individuals. The first iteration of AI tools has already improved retirement planning. For example, forward-thinking advisors are currently using AI note-taking tools, which allow advisors to listen more closely to their clients without missing...

April 17, 2026
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17Apr

Opt-in or Opt-out? The Power of Defaults in Pension Enrollment Choices

By Tabea Bucher-Koenen, Luisa Wallossek & Joachim Winter Default settings strongly increase pension enrollment, especially when savings incentives are high and choices are complex. We show that the effect is weaker when incentives are low, options are simple, and opting out is easy. We study the nationwide introduction of auto-enrollment for lowincome employees in Germany's public pay-as-you-go pension system. We find that automatic enrollment raises participation by 23 percentage points, though most individuals actively opt out. Linking administrative and survey data...

April 17, 2026
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10Apr

Communicating for action: Rewriting the social security engagement

By ISSA Social security institutions are shifting from traditional outreach into establishing leveraging communication tools and approaches that drives action from individuals. Through multi-pronged strategies they are engaging with individuals and creating meaningful connections that empower people to understand their rights, navigate services confidently, build trust and actively engage with social protection systems. Empowering individuals to know about and claim social security benefits and services is as much a delivery challenge as it is a communication one. People may have limited...

April 10, 2026
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10Apr

Opt-in or Opt-out? The Power of Defaults in Pension Enrollment Choices

By Tabea Bucher-Koenen, Luisa Wallossek & Joachim K. Winter Default settings strongly increase pension enrollment, especially when savings incentives are high and choices are complex. We show that the effect is weaker when incentives are low, options are simple, and opting out is easy. We study the nationwide introduction of auto-enrollment for low-income employees in Germany's public pay-as-you-go pension system. We find that automatic enrollment raises participation by 23 percentage points, though most individuals actively opt out. Linking administrative and...

April 10, 2026
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March 2026
20Mar

Employee Satisfaction and Pension Shortfall Risk

By Annita Florou, Meng Li, Peter F. Pope & Nipat Puangjampa Defined benefit (DB) pension plans are important to employee welfare. However, they carry risk as they are subject to minimum funding requirements. We examine the effect of a relaxation in pension funding rules on employee satisfaction by exploiting the adoption of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). We find that employees of DB firms are less satisfied with their firms and their senior managers, after...

March 20, 2026
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