New Financial presents report on ‘The future of pensions and retail investment in the EU’ at an event hosted by Wirtschaftsrat Hessen and Vanguard in Frankfurt
16 May 2025
Maximilian Bierbaum, head of research at New Financial, presented the findings of the report focusing on how the reform of Germany’s pensions system support savers and the economy.
Maximilian Bierbaum presented New Financial’s recent report on ‘The future of pensions and retail investment in the EU’ at an event in Frankfurt last week and exchange perspectives on the reform of Germany’s pensions system with Prof. Dr. Ralph Alexander Lorz, Katharina Brunsendorf, Sebastian Kuelps, and Dr. Carsten Lehr.
In what turned out to be a very timely discussion only a little more than a week after the new German government took office, Maximilian made three key points:
The focus in any debate on the reform of pensions and retirement saving should always be on how we can do a better job at providing a secure and comfortable retirement for millions of people.
The good news is that if done right, a happy consequence of the sort of reforms that are needed to stabilise the EU’s pensions systems and secure better outcomes for European savers in their retirements is that these reforms would also enable European pensions to play a bigger role in driving investment in the European economy.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel: in every area that we discussed in Frankfurt last week – in pensions, retirement saving, and retail investment – there are examples of EU member states where these things are already going very well, and there is no reason for why Germany shouldn’t look to countries like Sweden, Denmark, or the Netherlands for inspiration.