Surviving the rupture and thriving in the new regime

While the world faces another international geopolitical crisis, the global economy is moving through a structural shift. Continued ruptures and fragmentation have led to volatility becoming embedded in this new regime. Rupture has become the system.

For Europe, these repeated shocks have left the continent at a strategic crossroads. How can Europe address its capability gaps, rethink spending, and accelerate innovation? One area undergoing structural re-evaluation is the European pension systems.

Driven by demographics and rising pension costs, this shift represents a significant challenge for policymakers. However, it can also be seen as a way of mobilising significant long-term capital to support the European economy.

Explore the different reforms being considered, and why, and review the potential implications of these reforms on Europe capital markets and asset allocation.

Europe’s Pension Transition: From Retirement Challenge to Capital-market Opportunity

Europe’s pension systems are undergoing a structural change. Demographic ageing, tighter public finances and the evolution of retirement provision are reshaping the way pensions are financed and how savings are allocated. What is emerging is not only a pension challenge, but also a significant opportunity.

For pension funds and institutional investors, this transition matters on several levels. It affects the sustainability of retirement systems, the adequacy of future retirement income and, increasingly, the structure of European capital markets themselves.

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Rethink Retirement Accumulation: Integrating Real Assets and Inflation Risk into Lifecycle Investing

Retirement used to be a simple arithmetic problem: work, save a portion of your income, invest in a mix of stocks and bonds, then spend down the nest egg. But rising life expectancy, persistent inflation episodes, and a changing investment landscape have made that arithmetic far more complex.

This research reframes retirement planning as a continuous lifecycle problem — one that links the accumulation of wealth, the preservation of purchasing power and the practical realities of market frictions. It combines extended theoretical models with empirical analysis to argue that traditional stock–bond glide paths can be improved. 

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Adapting to Rupture: Capital Market Assumptions 2026

Amundi explores the forces driving the new market regime, the risks at play, and what the new system of rupture means for Amundi's macro scenarios and asset class assumptions.

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