• To redesign a retirement that builds the necessary financial resilience for longer lives, the World Economic Forum and Mercer have created a ten-point checklist to redesign retirement.
• Safeguarding financial wellness requires an all-encompassing view of a person. This means considering their tangible assets (including savings and property), but also less tangible assets such as health, skills and career readiness to work longer.
• It will also require coordinated efforts across stakeholder groups, including individuals, employers, financial services providers and governments.

Much still divides us: race, gender, ability, education, income, politics; even disease can choose its primary victims as COVID-19 has shown. But there is still one thing that unites us: ageing. The world’s collective age is rising at an unprecedented pace. Advances in healthcare have contributed to longevity – so much so that we are already talking about the 100-year life. But as much as we should celebrate this increased longevity, one important gap remains: how will the 100-year life be a financially secure one.

Even before COVID-19, the way in which societies and individuals prepared for retirement was not designed for our current demographic reality. On average, individuals are outliving their money by between eight and 20 years; women in particular are at the sharp end of this scale, with longer lives and pension savings around 40% lower than men’s.

Public coffers are under strain, causing unprecedented challenges to government pension schemes. This has been reflected in Aegon’s Annual Retirement Readiness Index (ARRI), which studies global attitudes and behaviours related to retirement planning and ranks retirement readiness across countries on a scale from 0 to 10.

Since 2012, the ARRI’s global average has fluctuated between a score of 4.9 and 6.0, indicating a low level of readiness. In 2020, nine of the 15 countries surveyed scored 6.0 or below, and none scored above 8.0 (indicating a high-level of readiness).

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