October 2025
24Oct

European pension providers back calls for governments to stop deforestation

Institutional investors, including European pension providers, have urged global governments to adopt strong policies to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 and to prevent further loss of natural ecosystems. The Belém Investor Statement on Rainforests highlighted investor concerns about the financial risks posed by tropical deforestation and nature loss, warning that exposure to commodities produced on deforested land creates material vulnerabilities across global investment and lending portfolios. It also said that the degradation of forests threatens the ecosystem...

October 24, 2025
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16Oct

Why Europe can’t face its pension black hole

France's political standoff shows how European governments, caught between the demands of their ageing electorates and the need to keep spending in check, keep struggling to fix the pension-shaped holes in their budgets. The right to a pension has been a central plank of the European social contract for decades. But longer life spans and fewer births mean most governments can't afford to have people retiring on a full pension in their early 60s, as was once the norm. The Week...

October 16, 2025
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14Oct

Saudi Arabia Named Arab Regional Center for Social Insurance Training by ISSA

The Liaison Office for Arab Countries at the International Social Security Association (ISSA) has approved Saudi Arabia as the headquarters of the regional center for training specialists in social insurance, underscoring the Kingdom’s leading role in pension and social protection systems at both regional and international levels. The center will focus on training national and regional professionals in social insurance and pension systems, enhancing their ability to keep pace with economic and social developments, and improving the efficiency of insurance...

October 14, 2025
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10Oct

Europe’s productive capital gap. Mobilising pension and household savings to scale up risk capital

By Patrick Augustin, Sebastien Betermier, Emma Gormley & Marie Parent The ALFI/McGill new study ‘Europe's productive capital gap’ shows that Europe is falling behind in mobilising household and pension savings into productive investment compared to reformed pension economies such as Australia, Canada, and Sweden. The study compares nine countries: four European economies with reformed, capital-based systems (Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden); two successful reformers outside Europe (Australia and Canada); and three major European economies still dominated by PAYG pensions (Germany,...

October 10, 2025
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10Oct

Europe’s aging burden far less than US or China

Graying Europe has long been considered an outlier in global demographics – but the rising cost to its governments in terms of bills for pensions and health care are more manageable than assumed and less than in rival economies in the United States and China. In a detailed report on the rising cost to the public purse from Europe's aging population, Brussels-based think Breugel this week outlined the trajectory through 2070 using the latest country-by-country data from the European Commission. Familiar...

October 10, 2025
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09Oct

Europe’s pension system reform could bring boost to risk assets

Europe’s growing productivity gap to the US and China in particular could be closed with the help of more long-term risk capital in asset classes such as public and private equities and infrastructure to drive productive investments, according to a study authored by researchers at McGill University in collaboration with the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (ALFI). In a report titled “EUROPE’S PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL GAP – Mobilising pension and household savings to scale up risk capital”, authors based at...

October 9, 2025
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07Oct

Aging, not smartphones, drives US’s growing loneliness crisis

In a recent study in PLoS One, researchers examined how birth cohort, time period, and age shape the time that people spend alone when social media and smartphone use are widespread. Their findings show that social isolation has increased sharply over the past two decades, accelerating since the mid-2010s. However, smartphones alone cannot explain these changes, with generational differences and aging contributing to isolation. Background The U.S. Surgeon General described isolation and loneliness as a national epidemic in 2023, pointing to online...

October 7, 2025
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03Oct

UK and European pension funds laying the groundwork for VC surge

UK and European pension funds are laying the groundwork to become a more significant source of venture capital (VC) funding, according to a report from Venture Connections, European Women in VC and Pensions for Purpose, with Nordic pension funds the most active, despite growing momentum in the UK. The report, Mapping Pension Funds Attitudes to Venture & Growth in Europe, suggested that pension funds have the chance to help savers benefit and support long-term economic renewal, estimating that while only...

October 3, 2025
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02Oct

Pension funds should invest in venture capital for climate benefits, argues report

Large European pension funds could support the development of new sustainable and digital products by investing in venture capital, argues a report by industry networks Venture Connections, European Women in VC and Pensions for Purpose. Pension funds could “channel billions into climate tech” and are “uniquely positioned to match the long timelines of the energy transition”, Pensions for Purpose chair and founder Karen Shackleton tells Sustainable Views. If European pension funds allocated 5 per cent of existing private equity investments to...

October 2, 2025
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August 2025
28Aug

1 in 5 Europeans will retire in poverty without urgent reform, EU watchdog warns

Poverty in old age will be the norm for a large chunk of Europe's population unless current retirement policies undergo deep reform, the EU's workplace pensions regulator has warned. "One in five Europeans is already at risk of living in poverty at old age," said Petra Hielkema, chief of the Frankfurt-based European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority. "[That's] a ridiculously high percentage, frankly. And if you then look at women, they have a 30 percent larger risk for that," she told...

August 28, 2025
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