![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/portrait_2280x1920.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Europeans are living longer than ever. More than one-fifth of the European Union\u2019s population is 65 or older, and the share aged 80 plus is set to more than double by the end of the century.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Deanna Strable, chief executive of Principal Financial Group, believes neither companies nor their staff are ready. \u201cEmployers and leaders are going to have to get used to people being in the workforce for a longer amount of time,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re all prepared for that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Falling birth rates mean fewer young people are entering the workforce, while millions of baby boomers are reaching retirement age. As a result, older workers are make up a larger proportion of the labor market. In 2025, a record two-thirds of 55- to 64-year-olds in the EU were in employment, according to Eurostat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As people stay in employment for longer, companies will have to adapt their working and hiring practices, job design, and provide training for people later in their careers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strable has led Principal since January 2025. The U.S.-based retirement and asset management company works with more than 200,000 American employers, and in Europe it manages money on behalf of pension providers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Principal has five generations of workers on its payroll. Reskilling and flexible career paths are becoming increasingly important, Strable says. Over the past 18 months, Principal has trained all 19,000 of its employees in AI, offering the courses in different formats because, as she puts it, \u201csome people want to do it very much on their own, other people want to do it with others sitting around the table.\u201d It has also extended its rotation programs, once limited to actuaries, to IT, accounting, and finance, so staff can move into new roles as their careers grow longer rather than feeling the need to move companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strable has spent her entire career at Principal, working her way up through 15 different roles, and thinks the company \u2018lifer\u2019 could make a comeback as workers look for employers that will help them adapt rather than gamble on starting again elsewhere. \u201cYou can have the equivalent of 10 different jobs with one company,\u201d she says, \u201cor you can start over at 10 different companies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Longevity\u2019s gender problem\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Longer life expectancies will also mean people will have to save more for retirement, unless they stay economically active for longer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This risks exacerbating the pension gender gap. A woman in the EU will spend about four fewer years in paid work than a man, yet she can expect to live five years longer. By the time she retires, she will typically receive a pension 24.5% smaller than a man\u2019s\u2014more than twice the size of the gender pay gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strable says longer lives risks widening that gap unless employers and the pensions industry act. Women tend to earn less, work part-time more often and take career breaks to care for others, so they retire with less saved.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A woman born in the EU today can expect to live to 84, and the European Commission projects that will pass 90 by the end of the century, so that smaller pot will have to stretch across ever more years of retirement. \u201cThat is something we all should be paying attention to because it could actually make things much worse,\u201d Strable says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Across Europe, responsibility for retirement is shifting from governments and employers to individuals, and women are less confident than men that the state will provide. Only 29% of European women believe their government\u2019s pension system will be enough to fund their retirement, compared with 39% of men, according to Principal Financial Group\u2019s latest Global Financial Inclusion Index. In Germany, the figure for women falls to 17%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The U.K. has automatically enrolled workers into workplace pensions since 2012, Ireland followed in January, and the Netherlands is replacing guaranteed pensions with personal savings pots. These strategies get more people saving, but they shift the job of funding retirement onto savers themselves.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe workplace is still where most retirement saving happens, which gives employers influence over how much people put aside,\u201d Strable adds. She recommends pairing auto-enrollment with auto-escalation, which is common in U.S. plans but rare in Europe, so contributions rise over time instead of staying at the minimum. \u201cLet\u2019s say you start at 5% but you ultimately want to get to a savings rate of 12%. That\u2019s daunting to most individuals,\u201d she says. Her answer is to tie each increase to the annual pay rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen\u2019s savings tend to slip at predictable moments, such as starting a family, caring for a relative, or losing income,\u201d Strable says. And \u201cemployers are often the first to know about those moments, through parental leave, carer\u2019s leave, or sick pay, which puts them in a strong position to help staff take stock of their savings.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet employer-provided financial guidance has fallen across advanced economies for two years running, according to Principal\u2019s index. This, a time when women already feel less equipped to plan ahead: only 54% of European women say they can easily access the tools they need to plan a secure retirement, compared with 64% of men.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMany women are left without professional financial advice\u2014often at the moment they need it most,\u201d Strable says. In many households the husband dealt with the advisor, so a widow may have no link to the person who knows the family\u2019s finances. According to insurer Liverpool Victoria, 41% of U.K. women would not feel confident managing household finances if their partner died.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not all financial professionals that understand the complexity of income and longevity,\u201d Strable says. \u201cHaving access to advice is important.\u201d Principal now encourages its advisors to build relationships with both partners, so the advice continues if one of them dies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Strable, financial security is part of a bigger picture: helping people live longer, healthier and happier lives, with the means to enjoy those additional years. As careers lengthen, the workplace also becomes an increasingly important consideration. \u201cA CEO\u2019s number one job is to create a culture where people want to stay and work,\u201d she says. Building a workplace where people want to spend their careers could become a significant competitive advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
#Europeans #living #working #longer #Principals #CEO #companies #arent #ready<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Europeans are living longer than ever. More than one-fifth of the European Union\u2019s population is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[5288,585,1386,4760,483,1501,4276,4200,984,21698,2530,942],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}