March 2026

New Retroactive Pension Payments for 37,000 in Greece

Anew round of retroactive pension payments is being implemented in Greece, targeting approximately 37,000 retirees, as the country’s main social security authority (e-EFKA) proceeds with gradual disbursements. The package concerns pending pension recalculations. Although pensions for these beneficiaries had already been recalculated, subsequent corrections and adjustments led to further increases. While the revised higher amounts were paid, the corresponding retroactive sums were not included at the time. These outstanding amounts will now be credited, covering the period from January 1,...

January 2026

Explaining Digital Payments Adoption with Econometrics and Explainable Machine Learning: Cross-Country Evidence from a Global Household Survey

By Saida Hajjaji This paper studies the determinants of individual adoption of digital payments using the Global Findex Database 2025, released by the World Bank and based on nationally representative household surveys conducted in 2024 across 141 economies. We combine a standard econometric approach with explainable machine learning (ML) methods in order to provide both transparent global benchmarks and granular, policy-relevant insights into digital payment behaviours. We first estimate a parsimonious logistic regression model on a broad multi-country sample of 5,189...

UK. Waspi chair says pension age fight is not over

Angela Madden was a full-time carer for her mother when she received a letter from the government in March 2012. It informed her she would not be eligible to receive a state pension for seven years, when she had expected to start receiving it in two. She is one of an estimated 3.6 million women born in the 1950s, who campaigners say were not properly informed of the rise in state pension age to bring them in line with men. And Angela,...

December 2025

Retirement by the Numbers: How participant behavior and glide path design can drive stronger retirement outcomes

By JPMorgan  How are participants interacting with their defined contribution retirement plans, and what are the implications for target date fund glide path design? For more than two decades, J.P. Morgan Asset Management has closely examined this question, analyzing real-world saving and spending patterns to provide actionable insights into how to help more people achieve the retirement they’ve earned. Retirement by the Numbers offers a unique view of how participants save, invest and spend throughout their working lives and retirement, leveraging...

November 2025

How America Retires: Turning complexity into clarity

By Vanguard This year, roughly 4.2 million people will turn age 65.* These individuals, collectively the so-called silver tsunami, are preparing to leave working life behind and enter a fulfilling and rewarding retirement. That’s exactly why we’ve created How America Retires, Vanguard’s new report that spotlights behavioral trends, insights, and plan design best practices to help today’s retirees make the life-changing transition from saving their money to spending it. Get the report here

Retirement reality: Managing money in mid-retirement

By Aviva People in their mid-70s overwhelmingly report that they want the security of an income for life, yet very few are confident that their savings will last. Many underestimate how long they need to budget for and tend not to engage with ongoing planning as they age. Modelling shows the risks of remaining in drawdown and the benefits of Flex First, Fix Later solutions that include later-life annuitisation as a way of addressing these challenges. Such an approach would...

September 2025

Australia. Analysis reveals benefit of lifetime income products

nvestment-linked lifetime income products can enhance retirement outcomes and sustainable regular income for Australian retirees, according to new research from Accurium. The findings of the research are significant, given that a central issue in retirement planning is longevity risk, or the fear of outliving savings, and demonstrate how investment-linked lifetime income products can help by providing income guaranteed for life that can grow with investment performance. It also found that these products improved access to the age pension, with modelling showing...

Boosting Retirement Income through Dynamic Withdrawals

By Ravi Saraogi Dynamic withdrawal strategies, extensively researched internationally, remain underexplored in India. This paper bridges this significant research gap by rigorously evaluating popular dynamic withdrawal methods using Indian data. Employing simulations based on historical equity, debt and inflation data from the Indian market, we compare 10 different adaptive and dynamic withdrawal strategies. The study demonstrates that dynamic strategies can improve withdrawals and sustainability compared to static withdrawal methods. However, this improvement comes at a significant cost of volatility in...

August 2025

Afghanistan resumes pension payments for civilian and military retirees

The Ministry of Finance has announced that, under the directive of the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate, pension payments for civilian and military retirees across Afghanistan have officially resumed. Mohammad Rahmani, Director General of the Pension Fund at the Ministry of Finance, told a press conference in Kabul that the payments will follow a well-organized plan and fixed schedule to ensure timely distribution. He added that only retirees whose documents have been fully processed and verified by the special...

Boosting Retirement Income through Dynamic Withdrawals

By Ravi Saraogi Dynamic withdrawal strategies, extensively researched internationally, remain underexplored in India. This paper bridges this significant research gap by rigorously evaluating popular dynamic withdrawal methods using Indian data. Employing simulations based on historical equity, debt and inflation data from the Indian market, we compare 10 different adaptive and dynamic withdrawal strategies. The study demonstrates that dynamic strategies can improve withdrawals and sustainability compared to static withdrawal methods. However, this improvement comes at a significant cost of volatility in...