While pensions centre around the third and final stage of life, the three stage lifecycle is quickly disappearing claimed London Business School's Professor Andrew Scott at the State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) DC conference.

Discussing his findings and most recent book The 100-Year Life, Scott said that the pensions industry needs to consider longevity and a new multi-stage life, away from the traditional “education, work, retirement” format.

Scott claimed that the role of the pensions industry is “shifting money from the second stage [work] to the third [retirement]”. As a result of this, he asserted that it has been easy for the industry to “look at someone’s age and know what to do”, however, he argued this is no longer the case.

Retirement, he said, “is rapidly disappearing and becoming a very diverse thing”. This being a result of extended life expectancies and therefore more opportunities leading to multiple routes of life.

SSGA Senior investment strategist Maiyuresh Rajah agreed with Scott and said that retirement as we know it is changing. He went on to coin the term the “betweenager” being those between employment and retirement and how the pensions industry should adapt to cater to them.

Surprisingly, however, Scott referenced a recent study by Manpower which looked at millennials and retirement, and reported that 12 per cent of UK millennials expect to work until they die. This stat alone highlights the urgency for the pension industry to consider all stages of life, to give younger generations more security and flexibility when it comes to their future, he added.

Emphasising the need for a focus on longevity, Scott said there needs to be an end to age specific approaches as the industry shouldn’t focus on end of life, but all stages of life.

Concluding his discussion, Scott posed the question “in a multistage life, what makes you a pensions manager rather than a savings manager?” indicating that the industry should not focus on pensions as something that should only be looked at in the last stage of a person’s life.

He finished noting that a shift towards pensions as a “lifetime approach” should be and is likely to be considered.

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