March 29, 2024

Swiss pension benefits are only modest

Swiss pension benefits are only modest

Iceland has the best pension system in the world. That’s the conclusion of the “2021 Global Pension Index” published Tuesday by consultancy Mercer, the CFA Institute and Monash University. The Netherlands and Denmark come in second and third.

With 11th place, Switzerland is still in the first third of the 43 countries examined. The study authors rated the safety of the Swiss model as good. So for example costs and management. On the other hand, the authors see a lot of catching up in the areas of sustainability and relevance.

So they suggest many improvements: for example, an increase in the retirement age, an increase in the rate of home ownership, and a decrease in family debt.

In politics, several pension reforms are currently pending: Parliament is currently bending over to raise the retirement age for women from 64 to 65. The second pillar is also fixed – the conversion rate will be reduced there. But both reforms will have a hard time in front of the people.

Thailand’s pension system has the worst result. Argentina, India, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the Philippines and Turkey are at the bottom of the ranking. In the middle are Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Uruguay and the USA.

The authors wrote in a press release that there are significant gender differences in retirement benefits in all regions of the world. They see several reasons for this, many of which are well known: Women work more part-time, are responsible for raising children more often and have lower average wages.

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According to the study authors, these problems are exacerbated by pension systems. In the case of Switzerland, they therefore propose removing restrictions on joining pension funds due to low income and reducing the coordination deduction for part-time employees.