A Retirement Wake-Up Call: The Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey 2016
Countries around the world are facing unprecedented change, creating both challenges and opportunities. The concept of retirement is evolving; life expectancy continues to increase, pressures on governments and pension systems are intensifying, and greater responsibility is shifting to the individual.
People are having difficulty keeping up with this rapid pace of change. Too few are adequately saving and planning for retirement. Most need greater access to financial advice and planning tools in order to navigate the future and improve their retirement outlook. Moreover, people’s expectations of how they will transition to retirement may be unrealistic unless employment practices change.
A Retirement Wake-Up Call: Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey 2016 is based on the fifth annual global retirement survey. It includes a five-year trend analysis based on the survey’s original nine countries in 2012 and present-day findings from 2016 based on 15 countries spanning Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. Since the survey’s 2012 inception, 70,000 workers and retirees have shared their preparations and perspectives regarding retirement. It is a collaboration among Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies (U.S.), Mongeral Aegon (Brazil), and Aegon (the Netherlands).
Central to the findings in this report is the lack of progress in retirement readiness across the globe. The report evaluates the current state of retirement readiness and delineates key areas warranting focus and attention, including the need for: sharing the responsibility for retirement preparation, inspiring a world of habitual savers, making retirement plans more inclusive by design, facilitating the new flexible retirement, and promoting active living and healthy aging in retirement.
This report highlights that a retirement wake-up call is needed. Solving the retirement challenge must be recognized as a shared responsibility. It requires engaging all stakeholders – governments, pensions industry, employers, and individuals – to actively take responsibility, create a dialogue for an inclusive retirement, and implement solutions so that everyone has the opportunity to achieve long-term financial security.
The 2016 findings in this report are based on the responses of 14,400 employees and 1,600 retired people in 15 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.