Retirement provision: what changed

The entries here concern the vehicles people actually retire on. The common thread across very different systems is a shift from voluntary, opt-in saving toward defaults — and from guaranteed pensions toward capital-market exposure.

The clearest examples are the newest. Italy shortened the silence period for TFR severance pay to 60 days from July 2026, so new private-sector employees are enrolled in a supplementary pension fund unless they actively refuse. Germany's Frühstart-Rente seeds a locked, capital-market-based depot for every child with a monthly state contribution, and the Altersvorsorgedepot passed in March 2026 opens a securities-based tax-advantaged retirement account. Neither would have been politically plausible ten years earlier.

Elsewhere the change is parametric but consequential. Switzerland's AHV 21 raised the reference age for women to 65 in 2024, while voters rejected the BVG occupational pension reform later that year; retroactive pillar 3a buy-ins from 2025 let savers close up to ten years of contribution gaps. Canada began phasing in the CPP enhancement in 2019, raising both contributions and the eventual replacement rate. The United States loosened distribution and contribution rules twice, through the SECURE Act in 2019 and SECURE 2.0 in 2022, while two attempts to impose a fiduciary duty on retirement advisers were struck down in court.

The EU's contribution, the Pan-European Personal Pension Product, has been applicable since March 2022 and remains the least used of these instruments — a reminder that a well-designed wrapper without national tax advantages does not move behaviour.