By 2045 in Europe we will go from around three workers per pensioner to less than two and the average replacement rate of public pensions in the European Union will fall from 45% to 41%. Among European savers with financial and real estate assets of less than 250 thousand euros, 80% do not consider themselves prepared for retirement, a percentage which in Italy translates into just 21% (2% very prepared, 19% quite prepared). Even among those with more substantial capital, almost half share the same concern.
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The indications come from a new study (titled: “Europe's Retirement Crisis Is an Opportunity for Insurers and Asset Managers”, carried out by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) through a survey of over 6,000 people in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, supplemented by 61 individual interviews and four group sessions.
The data collected indicates that the problem does not concern the propensity to save, but access to information. In fact, what weighs on the lack of awareness is above all the lack of knowledge about the available offer. Even among the most promising segment of savers for private pension products, only 54% know that these solutions exist and less than 60% of those who know actually own a plan. Once informed of the characteristics of the products, the picture changes: 74% of respondents express interest and, on average, they would increase the amount of savings earmarked for retirement by 10 percentage points.
The gap between latent interest and actual activation also emerges in the channels chosen to find information. Two thirds of respondents seek information on retirement independently, through online searches or artificial intelligence, while 40% turn to friends and family, preferring these channels over banking, insurance or tax advisors. The phenomenon is more marked among the under 35s, the group that already uses GenAI to find out more about their pensions than they turn to a bank advisor. Among those who declare themselves dissatisfied with interactions with an advisor (12% of the sample), the most cited reason is the perception of poor impartiality, indicated by 40% of respondents, a value significantly higher than the lack of clarity in explanations or the feeling of not being listened to.
In Italy, complementary pensions are today worth 243 billion euros, divided between 99 billion in individual plans and 144 billion in company plans, with an expected growth of 3.8% and 2% per year respectively until 2035. The Italian pension savings market has not yet seen a reform comparable to those introduced in France or Germany. Since 2007, there has been a mechanism for automatic membership of individual supplementary pension funds through the silent consent mechanism, and successive governments have made incremental changes to this program, rather than introducing structural changes.
