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Helping people save for retirement isn’t just about offering good plans; it’s about making good decisions easier. Behavioral science shows that small changes in how choices are presented can have a big impact on participation and long-term savings.

The biggest barrier? Inertia. Most people want to save but feel overwhelmed or unsure, so they delay taking action.

That’s where smart defaults come in. Automatically enrolling employees in a retirement plan, while allowing opt-outs, significantly boosts participation. It reduces friction and helps people follow through on intentions. One click can turn a hesitant saver into a committed one.

Nudges matter too. Prompts to increase contributions, well-timed reminders, or modest default rates can gently guide people toward better habits without pressure.

And because the future feels abstract, tools that make it more tangible, like lifestyle projections or dollar-value comparisons, can build stronger motivation to act now.

Clarity is just as important. Less jargon, fewer choices, and simple explanations give people the confidence to engage and make decisions that stick.

In short, better design leads to better outcomes. For retirement providers, the goal isn’t to push harder, it’s to guide smarter.

What’s one small change you think would make it easier for more people to start saving for retirement?

The retirement system has shifted dramatically since 1974, when IRAs were first introduced. It’s time to rethink the system and consider how changes in behavior, coverage, and technology impact how people save.

The system was built for a narrow definition of worker – someone who spends most of their adult life employed full-time by one or two companies, steadily earning, steadily saving, and eventually retiring with a pension or a robust 401(k). That kind of career trajectory is more myth than reality now, and for many people, it never existed in the first place. If we want a retirement system that includes everyone, we need to start thinking bigger, broader, and smarter.

Too many people don’t have access to any retirement plan at all. In the U.S., nearly half the workforce lacks a workplace retirement savings option. We’ve built a system that works if your job fits a certain mold. But work has changed. Millions of people are now freelancers, contract workers, part-time employees, caretakers, or in other roles that fall outside the traditional employer-sponsored benefits model. If the system doesn’t evolve, these people are left behind. But personal solutions alone, no matter how well designed, can’t close the access gap or replace the need for a broader, systemic fix. We need something universal. A default, opt-out retirement savings plan that follows people from job to job, industry to industry, life stage to life stage. Retirement savings should be automatic, portable, and accessible to every worker regardless of their employment classification.

That also means designing around real lives. Life is rarely linear. People take breaks to raise children, go back to school, care for aging parents, recover from illness, or simply navigate a tough economy. These aren’t anomalies. They’re part of the human experience. An improved retirement structure would allow people to pause and restart without losing ground. It would credit people for unpaid care work, which is essential to our society but completely undervalued in the way we allocate retirement benefits. There should be mechanisms in place to let people contribute more in years when they can afford it and less when they can’t, without penalties. The system should flex with your life.

Another barrier is complexity. The retirement planning process is intimidating for the average person. Most people don’t have the time, training, or desire to become amateur financial advisors just to avoid running out of money in their 80s. Yet the system requires that they select the right investment options, weigh risk, calculate withdrawal rates, and plan for a retirement that could span three decades or more. This is not a realistic expectation. We need simpler, smarter defaults. Low-fee, diversified funds should be the baseline. Lifetime income options should be automatically available – not just lump sums. And the entire experience should be designed with behavioral insights that help people stay on course.

Transparency and trust are critical, too. People are naturally wary of systems they don’t understand, and retirement finance has jargon, hidden fees, and fine print. Every account statement should be easy to read and impossible to misinterpret. And every person should have a simple, consolidated view of their retirement picture in one place, no more juggling accounts or guessing at the total. Technology can deliver this.

Ultimately, building a retirement system for everyone isn’t just a technical challenge, it requires rethinking retirement from the ground up.

For decades, retirement planning has leaned heavily on one idea: if people just understood more about money, they’d save more. Financial literacy has been treated as the fix-all , a belief that with enough education, people would make smarter choices and arrive at retirement financially secure. But the results have been underwhelming. Workshops, pamphlets, webinars all try to teach the same core principles, yet millions of Americans still fall short of what they’ll need in the years ahead.

The problem isn’t just a lack of knowledge. It’s that most retirement systems weren’t built for the way people actually behave. They’re clunky, confusing, and rarely intuitive. We’ve created platforms that require people to become part-time financial analysts, and then we fault them when they freeze up or tune out.

The truth is, saving for retirement isn’t only a math problem, it’s a design problem. User experience, or UX, plays a far bigger role in savings outcomes than most of the industry has acknowledged. And until that changes, we’ll keep seeing the same patterns: people opting out, falling behind, or never engaging at all.

Think about how people interact with digital services in the rest of their lives. We plan trips, shop, bank, and communicate through interfaces that are designed to be seamless. The best tools anticipate what we need before we ask. They guide us through choices with simple language and visual feedback. They don’t assume we read the terms and conditions – they build trust through clarity. Yet when it comes to retirement, the user experience is often stuck in the past. Enrolling in a plan can feel like navigating tax software. Picking investments feels like guessing on an exam. There’s jargon, legalese, and decisions that seem high-stakes but are poorly explained. It’s no wonder so many people give up before they start.

What’s missing is empathy, not just in tone, but in structure. UX design is fundamentally about reducing friction. It’s about helping people do the right thing without making it a chore. A well-designed retirement platform doesn’t push every option upfront. It starts simple and grows with the user. It offers context when needed. It nudges without nagging. And it celebrates small steps, like increasing a contribution or reviewing account performance, rather than waiting until someone hits a six-figure balance to offer praise.

Research backs this up. When plans automatically enroll employees instead of asking them to opt in, participation jumps. When people see clear visuals of how their savings today can translate into income later, they’re more likely to take action. When the experience feels manageable – not overwhelming – people stay engaged. These aren’t just design tweaks. They’re behavioral levers that can drive real financial improvement.

Unfortunately, most retirement platforms still treat UX as an afterthought. Interfaces feel like they were designed to satisfy legal teams, not actual users. They assume financial knowledge instead of offering it in digestible ways. They ask users to make decisions before building their confidence to do so. That kind of friction leads to paralysis, and over time that paralysis can cost people years of lost compounding.

Designing better tools starts with recognizing that users aren’t spreadsheets. They’re people with limited time, varying degrees of financial comfort, and more immediate concerns than “what will I live on in 35 years?” Retirement isn’t just about saving money; it’s about creating a sense of future stability. The UX needs to reflect that with less complexity, more encouragement, and a tone that respects the reality of everyday life.

Some providers are beginning to move in this direction, developing platforms that are more inclusive of individuals outside traditional employer-sponsored systems. Rather than overwhelming users with information up front, these approaches prioritize usability and guidance, making it easier for people to take action even if they’re starting from scratch. The emphasis is shifting from expecting perfect financial knowledge to designing tools that support real-world decision-making.

The larger lesson here is that we can’t wait for people to become experts. We have to meet them with systems that remove the guesswork. The future of retirement planning depends on making it feel doable, not daunting. When UX leads the way, the barriers come down. The decisions get clearer. And the outcomes improve – not because people got smarter overnight, but because the systems finally got smarter for them.

There’s still a role for education, but it’s not the silver bullet. What people need most isn’t another seminar or handbook. They need platforms that make it easier to start, easier to stay on track, and easier to feel like they’re making real progress. If we want better retirement outcomes, we need to build better experiences. And that starts not with teaching people to adapt to the system but designing systems that adapt to people.

The retirement system in America has a fundamental problem. It’s not that people don’t know they should save, or that they’re unwilling. It’s that they don’t have access. If you’re with a big employer that offers a 401(k), chances are you’re covered. If you’re not, odds are you’re on the outside looking in. That gap isn’t just frustrating, it’s a failure of how we structure opportunity.

But it doesn’t have to be.

The future of retirement lies with platforms that understand something simple: access isn’t just a feature. It is the strategy. The companies that will lead are the ones that make real retirement options available to everyone, not just to the segments that have traditionally been easy to serve.

People want to save for retirement. When you give them the tools, especially when it’s automatic, they use them. The real issue is that millions of workers don’t even get the chance. Gig workers, freelancers, part-timers, employees at small businesses – they’re often completely disconnected from the system.

It’s not about motivation. It’s the structure. Traditional retirement systems were never built to support low-balance accounts or people without employer sponsorship. Serving those accounts hasn’t been cost-effective, so most of the industry simply didn’t bother.

That’s left us with a system that scales for a few and shuts out the rest.

Fixing it means shifting how we think about retirement altogether. It’s not about slapping on a new product label or shaving a few basis points off fees. It’s about creating infrastructure that works for more people efficiently, sustainably, and at scale.

True platforms don’t just offer services; they make it easier for others to offer them too. They cut complexity. They turn manual work into automation. They make inclusion cost-effective instead of cost-prohibitive. That’s how change happens.

It’s a bit like cloud computing for retirement. Instead of every provider building their own stack, they tap into infrastructure that’s already built for scale.

Across financial services, we’re seeing a move toward broader access. More states are rolling out auto-IRA programs for workers without access through their jobs. Younger consumers expect digital-first experiences. Advisors are widening their focus beyond high-net-worth clients.

Through all of this, one thing stands out: inclusion isn’t just good policy. It’s smart business. The fintech boom proved that large, overlooked segments – once seen as too expensive or complex –

can become engines of growth when given simple, intuitive tools.

Retirement’s no different. The next wave of growth won’t come from squeezing more value out of the top tier. It’ll come from creating access for everyone else.

But that only works with the right infrastructure. You can’t scale inclusion on top of legacy systems. You can’t serve a thousand small accounts using the same methods you’d use for a single large one.

You need systems that are modular, cloud-based, and built from the ground up to automate what used to take entire back-office teams.

That’s what makes inclusion real. Not just policy. Not just awareness. Infrastructure.

When you shift the underlying economics, everything changes. What used to be a burden becomes an opportunity. What used to be out of reach becomes automatic.

The retirement landscape is moving quickly. The platforms that open the door wider will win, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes business sense. The organizations that embrace this shift won’t just grow; they’ll help define what retirement looks like in the modern world.

This isn’t about chasing trends. It’s about building systems that reflect how people live and work now – and making sure they have a shot at the future they’re working toward.

Access isn’t an add-on. It’s the main event.

The retirement industry has asked the same question for years: “How do we get more people retirement-ready?”

We’ve spent decades building products, designing plans, and improving access to investment options, but if we’re being honest, the results have been uneven at best. Participation rates remain stagnant in too many segments. Millions of workers, especially those in lower-wage or non-traditional jobs, still have no realistic path to long-term financial security.

Why? Because we’ve been trying to solve a distribution problem with a portfolio mindset.

The truth is that retirement readiness doesn’t begin with asset allocation or fund selection. It starts with the paycheck. Until we acknowledge that, we’ll keep designing systems that work well for those already inside them – and poorly for everyone else.

For high earners with financial advisors and steady incomes, planning for retirement is often a matter of optimization. Maximize contributions. Rebalance regularly. Take advantage of tax strategies. It’s about refinement.

But for the majority of American workers, the barrier isn’t portfolio management, it’s consistent, automated saving in the first place.

If someone doesn’t have access to a workplace retirement plan or isn’t sure how to open an IRA, telling them to “diversify early” or “watch your expense ratios” misses the point entirely. It’s like offering a playbook to someone who hasn’t been given a seat on the field.

The most effective way to bring more people into the retirement system isn’t through better products, it’s through seamless payroll integration. That’s the gateway. It’s where true inclusion begins.

When saving for retirement is automated directly from payroll, participation goes up. Barriers go down. People don’t have to navigate complex account setup processes, chase paperwork, or worry about missing a contribution. It just happens quietly, consistently, and sustainably.

That kind of frictionless experience is the baseline standard in other parts of life. We expect bills to autopay, subscriptions to renew, and transfers to happen in real time. Retirement savings should be no different.

True inclusion means designing systems that work for everyone, not just those with extra money to invest.

Freelancers, hourly workers, part-time staff, gig economy participants – these individuals often live without access to employer-sponsored retirement plans. But they do have income. And where income exists, there’s an opportunity to save, if the system is built to support it.

By embedding savings into payroll, we stop asking people to self-navigate a complicated industry and instead bring the solution to them, where they already are – earning a paycheck.

Behavioral research has shown that when retirement saving is optional, participation lags. When it’s automatic, participation significantly increases.

Auto-enrollment and payroll-based savings tap into that insight. They reduce the number of decisions people have to make in the moment and allow financial wellness to grow quietly in the background of their lives.

But auto-enrollment isn’t just a nice-to-have feature, it’s a core strategy for closing the access gap. And that’s what payroll integration enables at scale.

We now have the tools to make this vision real. API-based payroll integrations. Real-time contribution updates. Embedded financial tools that fit inside existing employer and employee workflows.

But tech alone isn’t enough. We also need to rethink how we frame participation. Instead of saying, “Here’s a retirement product you should consider,” we need to be saying, “Saving for the future is part of getting paid.”

That one shift – from product to process – changes everything.

For providers and plan sponsors, this isn’t just an altruistic play. It’s a long-term growth strategy.

The more people who participate early and consistently, even in small amounts, the more assets under management grow over time. A $50 paycheck deduction today becomes thousands in contributions over a career. And those participants are more likely to engage, refer others, and remain loyal to platforms that made saving feel easy.

If we want to close the retirement gap, we have to meet people at the point of income, not after. We need to shift from portfolio thinking to paycheck thinking. From optimizing for the few to building for the many.

Because real readiness doesn’t begin with charts or fund lineups. It starts the moment someone earns a dollar and sees that saving a piece of it is not only possible, but expected, easy, and built into the way work is done.

The paycheck is the gateway. It’s where equity begins. And it’s where the future of retirement must take root.