Retirement today is a far cry from what it was 100 years ago. Currently, several forces are combining to change what we now know as retirement into something that will hardly be recognizable in as little as ten years. Among the forces making this change likely are increasing life expectancy; a generally beneficent economic situation; increasing levels of affluence; people living healthier lives; declining levels of violence, war, and crime; increasing global interdependance; and the overhang of too few younger households supporting too many older ones.

Redefining Retirement–Life Stages



In today's world and the world of the future, financial services are the tools with which we build our lives. As consumers live longer lives in which they seek to do a wider variety of things with a growing level of affluence, they will increasingly turn to financial institutions to provide the products and services to enable them to implement their goals. Generally, the financial products and services available today developed during a time ofshorter life spans and scarcity; they are not designed to fulfill the needs of consumers in the future. In the next ten years, as the leading edge of Boomers approaches the traditional age of retirement, we will see the anecdotal evidence of changes in life stages promulgated by the avant-garde begin to be adopted by a growing proportion of households. As the concept of retirement alters, financial institutions' challenge will be to innovate to meet the evolving needs of these new, emerging life stages.