September 2026
25Sep

UK. FCA: Over 320,000 pension pots withdrawn at 8%+ rates and risk emptying pension pots

While smaller pension sizes see the highest proportion of high withdrawal rates, over 15% of pots of £250,000 or larger and more than a third (36%) of pots between £100,000 and £249,000 were still withdrawn at 8% or over through the latest financial year. Looking at the data by age, half (50%) of those aged 55-64 are making regular withdrawals at an annual rate of 8% or higher. The data also shows that 479,485 pensions were fully withdrawn at the first...

September 25, 2026
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15Sep

South Africa. Government workers pull R15-billion from retirement savings

Government employees rushed to their retirement savings when South Africa’s two-pot system opened the door to early withdrawals. More than 564,000 claims worth about R15-billion were processed in only seven months. Statistics South Africa said the Government Pensions Administration Agency processed 564,547 claims between September 2024 and March 2025. That works out to an average of about R26,570 for each claim. The scale of the withdrawals stands out because South Africa has about 1.3-million public servants. This means the number of claims was equal...

September 15, 2026
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August 2026
07Aug

Bequest-Motivated Decumulation of UK Pensions for Non-Domiciled Individuals: A Monte-Carlo and HJB Approach

By Sebastien Hitier We study the optimal decumulation of a UK pension pot for an expatriate holder who is tax-resident in a jurisdiction that does not tax investment income or gifts. Because the pension wrapper offers no ongoing tax shelter to heirs, the holder's sole objective is to minimise the expected present value of lifetime taxes-personal income tax on drawdowns plus inheritance tax at death. We formulate the problem as a stochastic optimal control with Gompertz-Makeham mortality, progressive UK taxation,...

August 7, 2026
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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
10Jul

Hard Times Drive Surge in Early Pension Withdrawals Across Kenya

A growing number of Kenyans are withdrawing their retirement savings long before reaching retirement age as households grapple with rising living costs, unemployment, business losses and mounting financial pressures, exposing the deep economic strain facing workers across the country. Latest industry data shows that early pension withdrawals have surged in recent years, with financial hardship overtaking retirement as the main reason many contributors are accessing their savings. Pension fund managers say more workers are opting to cash out immediately after...

July 10, 2026
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June 2026
24Jun

The World’s Best Retirement Systems Share One Habit. In the U.S. People Have to Build It Alone.

Each year, Mercer and the CFA Institute publish the Global Pension Index, which scores 52 national retirement systems - covering about two-thirds of the world's population - on how well they actually serve retirees. It isn't a popularity contest. Systems are graded on adequacy (do benefits keep people comfortable?), sustainability (will the money still be there in 30 years?), and integrity (is the system well-run and trustworthy?). In the most recent rankings, the United States came in 30th, with a score of 61.1 -...

June 24, 2026
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17Jun

US. Retirement savings set record high — but so do hardship withdrawals: Vanguard

There's some good news and some not-so-good news on the retirement front from Vanguard. Americans set aside a record amount of money in their 401(k) accounts last year, according to Vanguard's "How America Saves 2026" report. But while savings rates are up, so are the number of Americans tapping their 401(k) for emergencies. Vanguard said 6% of participants made a hardship withdrawal in 2025, the largest share ever and up from 5% in 2024. "Pressures such as inflation and rising interest rates contribute...

June 17, 2026
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May 2026
25May

UK Pensioners Suffer Heavy Tax Losses as 462,000 Rush to Withdraw Savings

Hundreds of thousands of British retirees are inadvertently surrendering significant portions of their life savings to HM Revenue and Customs, as an unprecedented rush to withdraw pension cash exposes catastrophic flaws in national retirement guidance. Startling data published annually by the Financial Conduct Authority reveals a 29 percent surge in the number of individuals cashing out their entire pension pots. Driven by unrelenting cost-of-living pressures and highly restrictive legacy financial products, retirees are triggering massive, entirely avoidable tax liabilities that...

May 25, 2026
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20May

South Africa. Pay is up. So why are workers raiding pensions?

The average salary increase this year was 5.43% – comfortably above inflation. Yet those same workers are tapping pensions to buy groceries and walking out of jobs at the fastest rate since Covid. he numbers, on paper, say South African workers are doing fine. The reality says something else. The average salary increase this year was 5.43%, according to the April 2026 Remchannel Bi-Annual Salary and Wage Movements Survey. That compares with 2025’s average inflation of 3.2%. By that arithmetic, most...

May 20, 2026
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15May

New Economics of Retirement: New Solutions Provide a Ray of Hope

By Goldman Sachs In our annual Retirement Survey & Insights Report, we are pleased to present findings that may challenge conventional wisdom about retirement preparedness in America. While many acknowledge the looming retirement crisis, the traditional advice to simply save more may fail to account for the complex and evolving realities faced by millions of Americans. This year’s report introduces the "new economics of retirement,” as we grapple with the question “does the retirement math still work?” The report illustrates how rising costs...

May 15, 2026
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