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Reimagining Retirement – Part 1 The Shifting Global Landscape for Retirement | Snapshot

Reimagining Retirement is a research series from State Street, bringing together complementary perspectives on how retirement systems are evolving and what those changes mean in practice. By combining macro-level analysis with insights into retirement behaviour and confidence across the ecosystem, the series provides a forward-looking framework for understanding change and identifying where thoughtful action can make a difference.

05 August 2026

Olivia Kennedy, CFA

Head of European Institutional Strategy

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This Snapshot highlights key findings from our latest research across 15 retirement markets, exploring the structural forces reshaping retirement systems and the opportunities emerging across the retirement ecosystem.

Retirement is a system-level challenge that affects billions of people and sits at the center of global capital markets.

Across regions, retirement systems are at an inflection point—more people are entering retirement while living longer in retirement at a time when real rates and equity valuations are high and government funding limited. These structural forces are reshaping retirement systems, individual retirement outcomes and the commercial landscape for providers.

To understand how demand for retirement-related financial services is changing as a result of these structural forces, we connect macro to micro analysis, and identify where financial services could meet this shifting demand.

We apply that cross-pillar lens to a diverse set of 15 countries, connecting system design to real operating decisions across the retirement ecosystem (e.g. sponsors, advisors, asset managers, administrators and recordkeepers, custodians, regulators and supervisory authorities, and participants).

Geographic scope of our research

5 Global forces reshaping retirement

We start with five global forces and map their directional impact across the World Bank’s multi-pillar retirement architecture.

How macro forces are impacting retirement systems

Six opportunities

The future of retirement will be determined not by how much people save, but by how well systems convert savings into sustainable, reliable income within a changing economic and demographic landscape. Our research paints a picture of a retirement landscape under dramatic change.

Retirement income

As large defined contribution (DC) cohorts retire, systems are standardizing default incomepathways that blend guided drawdown, risk pooling and where appropriate annuitization. Theseshifts elevate income sustainability, not balances, as the primary outcome.

Digital advice

Dashboards and integrated platforms are consolidating records and orchestrating next-stepdecisions. Secure data sharing, behavioral design and cyber-resilient workflows are centralto execution.

Coverage expansion

Auto-enrolment, low-friction onboarding and portable accounts are extending funded systems to previously excluded workers and reducing leakage over working lives.

Risk transfer

High funding ratios are accelerating bulk annuity and longevity solutions, making execution capability— data readiness, member communication and liability-aware portfolio construction—top priorities for DB endgame planning.

Private markets

Diversification, inflation linkage and long-duration returns and more important than ever, while sustainability considerations increasingly shape how capital is governed and allocated.

Women and youth

Intergenerational wealth transfer and digital-first engagement are reshaping income design, experience delivery and system expectations.

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