Need To Build Resilient Pension Structures Today To Shield Future: Dr V Anantha Nageswaran

The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) and the Institute of Actuaries of India (IAI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the first day of the two-day Joint Conference on Pensions (JCP) 2026, on June 30, 2026, in New Delhi. This collaboration seeks to strengthen partnerships for actuarial research and pension policy development, considering the changing demographics, especially the growing number of elderly people.

The partnership aims to enhance research-based policymaking and product development, and with this collaboration initiative, PFRDA and IAI intend to design long-term retirement solutions and work towards the national goal of Viksit Bharat.

Ageing Challenge

While addressing the ageing challenge, Dr V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India, emphasised the urgent need to build resilient pension structures today to shield a future ageing population. He underscored that the industry’s next challenge is to ensure a steady and predictable post-retirement income stream for people, in addition to their asset accumulation.

He further highlighted that achieving universal pension coverage, especially in the informal sector, requires absolute product simplicity and strong digital delivery to maintain long-term trust among people.

Decumulation

S. Ramann, Chairperson of PFRDA, noted that while the National Pension System (NPS) has an established framework for savings, the next goal is to optimise the decumulation phase. Focusing on decumulation and longevity, he noted that the PFRDA-IAI alliance will work together to devise products that are easy to understand and flexible enough to suit subscribers’ realities.

Longevity

Preeti Chandrashekhar, President of the IAI, highlighting the longevity, stated that escalating life expectancies require retirement security to be increased. She emphasised that collaboration between regulators, actuaries, technologists, and economists is necessary to create solutions that can be personalised and used to manage longevity risks and uncertainty.

Digital Public Infrastructure

Ayako Inagaki of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said that India has the potential to scale pension inclusion by using its world-class digital public infrastructure and stressed that multi-stakeholder coalitions are required between government and civil society to achieve the objective.

There were also discussions regarding the recently launched Retirement Income Scheme (RIS) under the NPS infrastructure, providing sustainable pension solutions and social security to the rapidly growing workforce in the informal sector.