Experts are calling on pension institutions, employers and governments to rethink how they engage younger workers, who are increasingly turning to equity markets instead of traditional retirement channels.
Informing and motivating young people about retirement – something many still see as remote – remains a major challenge, according to Lisa Brüggen, director of Netspar and professor of financial services.
Speaking at a webinar organised last week by PensionsEurope, the European Association of Paritarian Institutions (AEIP) and the European Tracking Service (ETS) Association as part of European Retirement Week, Brüggen said: “Pension funds could improve collaboration with employers, who have a closer relation with the employees, and know when life events occur.”
Life events such as starting a new job or getting married – particularly when pension funds include survivor benefits – offer touchpoints for employers to raise retirement issues with younger staff, she added.
But traditional pension institutions have been slow to recognise that younger generations want information and investment products that are digital-first and simple to access.
A new study by MetallRente, the pension scheme of IG Metall and Gesamtmetall, shows the proportion of young people in Germany investing for retirement via stock markets, ETFs and neo-brokers has surged from 31% in 2019 to 62% in 2025.
“They [young people] not only use funds, ETFs and shares to save for retirement, they also trust them. That was a big surprise [in the study],” said MetallRente co-chief executive officer Hansjörg Müllerleile during the webinar.
For the first time, the employer is the most trusted source when it comes to retirement saving, while confidence in the public pension system continues to decline, the study found.
Müllerleile acknowledged that pension institutions still typically communicate with members only once a year.
“On a technical level, it is irrelevant if your account goes up or down during a year, but on an emotional level – and financial education is also about emotions – is absolutely not irrelevant, and that is what we should learn as pension institutions from other providers,” he said.
School project
MetallRente’s research also shows 87% of young people believe saving for old age should be part of a dedicated school subject on economics and finance. Earlier this month, co-CEO Kerstin Schminke urged the German government to introduce nationwide lessons on pensions and expand digital access to information.
Digital channels are reshaping how people consume information, and the pensions sector is struggling to keep up. In Italy, start-up Ciao Elsa uses social media storytelling to help savers understand the country’s pension system and their options.
“We saw two major gaps, a knowledge gap – many Italians don’t understand how the pension system works, and a language gap,” said co-founder Anna Vinci.
Ciao Elsa has partnered with Istituto Nazionale Previdenza Sociale (INPS) to develop educational content, combining “the flexibility of a start-up” with the credibility of the first-pillar institution, she added.
The ETS Association, meanwhile, is working to link more national tracking systems to its platform to give mobile workers a consolidated overview of their pensions.
“Mobile workers are even more illiterate about a national pension system than the domestic citizens,” said chair Claudia Wegner-Wahnschaffe, noting that it is one key point to remember when information for the users is being drafted, trying to avoid jargon for clarity.
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