The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) today published a summary report presenting the insights from its pilot Techsprint on pension awareness. During a multi-day, collaborative event involving experts from various fields, participants competed as three teams to develop practical digital solutions to address pension gaps for groups that are underserved by traditional pension arrangements: women, members of Generation Z, self-employed and gig workers.
The results of the Techsprint are three proofs-of-concept targeting the needs of these distinct groups, identifying potential solutions that leverage digital technologies and behavioural insights. All three models were designed to encourage sustained saving habits and ultimately improve pension outcomes for the target groups through AI-driven and highly personalized apps:
- “Future Me”, a pension co-pilot for women, offering tips, reminders, scenario-based simulations and peer insights to boost long-term savings behaviour, promoting early engagement and improving awareness to enable informed retirement planning.
- “FIRE”, an AI-powered financial companion for Gen Z, that aims to deliver clear guidance, gamified learning, and social validation features to help young professionals improve their spending habits and build long-term saving goals. Using familiar social media formats, it makes early retirement planning engaging, crucial as public pension systems face growing pressure.
- “GIG”, a save-as-you-earn solution for gig workers and the self-employed, whose earnings are often unpredictable. Each time income is received, a portion is automatically allocated to a pension account and an emergency fund. It offers a flexible default savings option, creating a customisable saving plan.
The Techsprint’s cross-stakeholder collaboration — involving supervisors, start-ups, academics, industry representatives and consumer organisations — demonstrated how digital innovation, behavioural insights and user-centric design can be leveraged to address long-standing structural barriers in retirement planning.
In particular, it illustrated how innovation can help address long-standing structural barriers in retirement planning. For regulators and supervisors, the Techsprint offered a clear window into how new technologies can improve consumer engagement and how careful design can both empower and protect them. Importantly, it highlighted that one-size-fits-all approaches are often inadequate, and that different groups are more likely to engage with tailored tools that reflect their realities.
Details
- Publication date
- 26 November 2025