Europe faces two significant and related challenges: building scale in our capital markets and addressing the growing pension gap faced by many citizens. Smart pension reform can kill these two birds with one stone. As a proud founding partner of European Retirement Week, EFAMA hosted on Tuesday 25 November at 15:45 CET an online discussion on effective national pension reform, where two prominent academics from McGill University shared the lessons learned from their comparative analysis of multiple EU and non-EU countries.
The co-authors of the study presented their findings and examined why many European countries are falling behind in mobilising household and pension savings into productive investment compared to countries with more advanced pension systems, such as Sweden, Canada and Australia. They explained how countries that transitioned to partly funded pension regimes in the 1990s are now poster-child cases of successful reform, showing how gradual changes, compound interest, and equity-heavy investment strategies can dramatically scale up national pools of risk capital.
The presentation was followed by a Q&A session, offering a unique opportunity to connect the study’s findings with the EU’s pension reform proposals, which are scheduled to be unveiled shortly.
Distinguished speakers included:
- Patrick Augustin, Associate Professor of Finance, McGill University & Director, MMF Luxembourg and McGill Luxembourg Centre for Finance
- Sebastien Betermier, Associate Professor of Finance, McGill University & Executive Director, International Centre for Pension Management
- Corinne Lamesch, Deputy CEO and General Counsel, Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (ALFI)
- And your host, Andreas Stepnitzka, Deputy Director of Regulatory Policy at EFAMA
