Strengthening Asset-backed Pension Systems in a Post-COVID World

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 provoked a global health crisis, soon followed by an economic and financial crisis. Retirement savings and old-age pension systems were one of the many components of our societies impacted by these events, which are unprecedented in recent history. The economic effects of the crisis have been accumulating for the past years as governments introduced successive health measures to try and curb the spread of the virus. The slowdown of economic activity across the globe resulted in soaring unemployment and falling stock prices in the first quarter of 2020 as financial markets reacted.