Findings from the WTW Western Europe Retirement Plan Survey, 2025
The pressures of an ageing population and strained public finances are challenging national pension systems and driving greater reliance on employer retirement plans. Employees have growing expectations for the experience and support provided by their retirement plan, and organizations are seeking to get more value from their benefit spend. Together, this is placing retirement benefits under the spotlight, and organizations are looking to transform how they communicate, deliver and support their retirement benefits.
Findings from the 2025 WTW Benefits Trends Survey show a clear direction. There is a drive to use retirement benefits as a differentiator and to enhance employee incomes in retirement. There is a sharp focus on enhancing the employee experience and building a wider framework of support around at-retirement decision making, broader retirement planning and financial wellbeing. However, with budgets under pressure and delivery challenges, this will require smarter spending and greater operational efficiencies.
European employers are increasingly reimagining the role of retirement plans. While regulatory compliance and market alignment still matter, many are now looking to enhance the role of retirement as a tool to strengthen talent strategies, redesigning them to be more employee-centric and provide better long-term retirement security. 70% of employers say their highest retirement plan's objective is designed to either attract and retain talent or to help provide an adequate income in retirement. For them, a retirement plan is no longer just a cost of doing business, but increasingly a differentiator.
But how are employers looking to do this? To build retirement plans that are fit for the future, companies are focusing on key areas, aiming to build engagement, enhance financial well-being, improve efficiencies and overcome delivery challenges (Figure 1).
Notably, priorities vary across Europe, reflecting local contexts. While employee experience and financial wellbeing emerge as common themes, Germany emphasizes reducing time spent on management, Belgium focuses on cost control and France and Ireland give greater weight to at-retirement support.
These objectives — while interconnected — are nonetheless ambitious. With limited resources and competing priorities, it's challenging for employers to realistically deliver on all fronts, and employers will need to prioritize on their core ambitions and what delivers the greatest value to employees and focus on greater operational efficiency.
Here are the four key trends emerging across Europe that will help deliver on these ambitions.
01
Employers realize that engaging employees with their retirement benefits remains a challenge, and nearly 2 in 3 (60%) companies across Europe are prioritizing improving the employee experience as a top priority. Elevating the experience means meeting employees where they are — through smarter communication, digital access and greater personalisation. Most employers are looking to take action across several fronts, by enhancing communication, tools and support.
This reflects a growing commitment from employers to actively support employees throughout their retirement journey — from building awareness and understanding to helping them plan for retirement with greater confidence.
02
Employers increasingly recognize that retirement readiness and long-term financial security can't be addressed in isolation from employees' day-to-day money challenges. As a result, organizations are looking to broaden the support they offer employees with regards to their financial wellbeing goals (Figure 2).
| Today | Future* | |
|---|---|---|
| One-to-one retirement planning support | 37% | 61% |
| Online modelling tools to help employees understand what incomes they can expect in retirement | 33% | 63% |
| One-to-one guidance on financial wellbeing | 24% | 49% |
*In place today or planning or considering doing so in the next 3 years
These shifts signal a clear move by employers toward more targeted support to bridge the short- and long-term financial needs of employees, combining personalized guidance and digital tools to help employees make informed financial decisions throughout their working lives.
03
Less than half of employers across Europe (46%) believe their current plan will deliver adequate income in retirement. Improving this situation is a key priority for a majority of employers (53%). Yet, given budgetary pressures, few employers are in a position to increase contribution rates.
Nevertheless, companies are still looking at other ways to move the needle on retirement outcomes. There is a focus on finding efficiencies in the investment strategy (cutting fees and charges, seeking to grow investment returns) or enhancing employee engagement and financial wellbeing, so that employees can boost their own personal savings for retirement. 37% are aiming to encourage employees to save more for retirement voluntarily. Whether this will prove sufficient remains to be seen, and it raises the question of whether employers will ultimately need to explore design changes to their retirement plans in the future.
To drive better retirement outcomes, companies must understand what their employees can expect from the plan and how the plan is performing. Yet today, for many organizations, such information will be scarce. That's changing, and 40% say that improving the understanding and measurement of the scheme's performance is a key priority.
04
Employers across Europe have an ambitious agenda for change, but they simultaneously face significant operational challenges – 47% report challenges managing costs and risks and 43% want to reduce the time spent managing their plan. To reconcile these ambitions whilst addressing these operational challenges, employers will need to be smarter with how they use their existing resources, turning to technology, automation and outsourcing to streamline plan administration and delivery.
It also means targeting support and spending where it matters most. In this, a greater understanding of what employees want is critical. Employers see a growing role for data and analytics in elevating the employee experience and, by extension, tailoring company benefits to better meet employee needs.
The findings from our 2025 Western Europe Retirement Plan Survey show that employers are recognizing the need to reframe retirement plans as a strategic tool, not only to deliver stronger retirement outcomes, but also to differentiate in the talent market and support broader financial wellbeing. Delivering on this ambition won't be easy. Most organizations face resource constraints and operational hurdles. The challenge is to translate intent into action — balancing ambition with practicality.
To achieve this, employers should look to reframe plans around what employees need and value, prioritizing stronger support, clearer guidance and a more engaging employee experience at the key moments that matter. Many are turning to digital portals and modellers to help employees understand and engage with their plan and provide guidance at retirement and, more broadly, to support financial wellbeing. At the same time, employers will need to focus on efficiency to be able to deliver these changes, streamlining administration, investing in digital tools and outsourcing where required.
At WTW, we work with leading employers across Europe to navigate this change — helping HR teams design retirement strategies that are both fit for purpose and fit for the future.
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If you would like a personalized benchmark summary to understand how your organization's situation compares to others and to examine the trends outlined above in more detail, or to help your organization build a plan to turn its ambitions into reality, please contact your local WTW representative.
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