The Pension Industry Association of Jamaica (PIAJ) has hired Market Research Services Limited (MRSL) to map how Jamaicans save and prepare for retirement, seeking data to back its push for pension reform.
“We have been having important discussions about pension reform, expanding pension coverage and improving retirement security, but those discussions need to be grounded in a much better understanding of how Jamaicans actually earn, save and think about retirement today,” said PIAJ President Sanya Goffe.
Goffe said the available data on retirement income and savings in Jamaica is limited or dated.
The National Savings, Retirement Preparedness and Pensioner Welfare Survey will examine saving behaviour, income and earning patterns, pension participation, retirement expectations and the financial circumstances of people already in retirement. It will also test whether Jamaicans’ overall savings can support them in retirement, not just whether they belong to a pension plan, and probe why people fail to save consistently.
The study will focus on self-employed people, informal workers and others whose income patterns do not fit traditional pension arrangements, gauging their willingness and ability to join more flexible or lower-contribution schemes.
That group sits at the centre of the coverage problem. The Financial Services Commission, in its 2026 consultation paper on pension adequacy and coverage, reported that contributors to private and public pension arrangements made up less than 20 per cent of the employed labour force at December 2025. Coverage varies sharply by sector: fewer than one per cent of agricultural workers and under two per cent of those in mining and construction pay into a private plan, against roughly half of workers in commerce and finance.
The regulator proposed simplified enrolment, flexible contribution schedules for people with irregular income, and mobile wallet payment channels as ways to widen participation.
The gap persists even as the industry’s assets grow. Pension funds held about J$847 billion in invested assets at the end of September 2025, according to Finance Minister Fayval Williams, who in March announced plans to raise the cap on pension fund investment in private companies from five per cent to 7.5 per cent of assets.
Goffe said the research should move the industry beyond assumptions about what Jamaicans need.
“There are policy questions to be addressed, but there are also questions about affordability, trust and the way people manage income from month to month. Having current data will put us in a much stronger position to contribute to reforms and to encourage the development of products that are responsive to people’s actual circumstances,” she said.
MRSL will conduct face-to-face and computer-assisted interviews with a national sample drawn proportionately from all 14 parishes, spanning income, employment and demographic groups. The firm expects to finish fieldwork within three to four months, with findings due by January 2027.
PIAJ said the results will support its reform advocacy and help member firms understand the saving behaviour of their clients.
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