Saudi Arabia’s pension system improves on back of increased labor participation: Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index

Saudi Arabia’s pension system improves on back of increased labor participation: Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index

- Saudi Arabia improves its score and ranks 27th in the global Index

Riyadh, KSA – The pension system of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia improved its score, ranking 27th out of 44 retirement systems in the 14th annual Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index (MCGPI). Globally, Iceland was top, followed by the Netherlands, while Thailand ranked last. This year’s MCGPI also features Portugal as a new addition.

The MCGPI is a comprehensive study of 44 global pension systems, accounting for 65 percent of the world’s population. It benchmarks retirement income systems around the world, highlighting some shortcomings in each system, and suggests possible areas of reform that would help provide more adequate and sustainable retirement benefits. The Saudi retirement income system was benchmarked against global peers across three key areas of focus: adequacy, sustainability, and integrity.

Saudi Arabia’s overall index value improved from 58.1 in 2021 to 59.2 in 2022, primarily due to an increase in its sustainability score which went from 50.9 to 54.3. The sustainability of the Kingdom’s pension system has been bolstered in recent years due to an increased labor force participation rate, with the number of women with jobs nearly doubling in the last five years, and by