The Aspen Institute

Over 55 million Americans lack access to a workplace retirement plan. It’s therefore unsurprising that in recent years, public policy discussions around the retirement system in the US have focused on possible measures to expand coverage. Meanwhile, Australia and the UK have created near-universal coverage, but through different policy interventions.

In this webinar, Ida Rademacher will discuss parallels and potential lessons across the three systems with Steve Utkus from Vanguard’s Center for Investor Research and Will Sandbrook from the UK’s NEST program. Vanguard’s ‘How America Saves’ publication has provided a critical benchmark for understanding retirement saving in the US. In recent years, they have published ‘How Australia Saves’ and this year, with NEST Insight as a partner, ‘How the UK Saves’.

In conversation, Ida, Will and Steve will identify some of the points of similarity and difference that emerge from these publications, and use these as a jumping off point for a broader discussion encompassing other Vanguard, Aspen FSP and NEST research on retirement savings.

The Aspen Institute Financial Security Program and NEST Insight have come together in a transatlantic collaboration to help solve the next generation of retirement challenges. The partnership seeks to enhance understanding of, and provide new insight into, how the retirement system can be improved for low to moderate earners. Through research and discussion, it will help policy-makers and the industry to identify and test potential solutions that can form the next phase of innovation in this sector.

The Collaboration is seeking partners who are interested in providing feedback on these ideas to help us to develop our work program, and who can act as funding- and thought-partners as we embark on actualizing them. For more information read our Framing Paper: The Aspen-NEST Insight Transatlantic Collaboration.