Money Money Money: How much money do you need for retirement?

India has seen a slight improvement in its ranking on the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index 2019 - a study that compares retirement and pension systems around 37 different countries worldwide. Now while that's good news, we are far from having a fully sufficient pension system.

In this edition of Money Money Money, Surabhi Upadhyay discusses the findings of the Mercer Report and also talk about how one can ensure retirement security with Preeti Chandrashekhar, India Business Leader, Health and Wealth Mercer and Mohit Gang, CEO & Co-Founder of Moneyfront.in.

Talking about improvement in ranking Preeti Chandrashekhar said, “It is global index which measures three key things - first is how much is my pension system giving me as a citizen of a country that is adequacy, second one is how long will it be able to give it to me, that is a sustainability angle and third is can I really trust it that is the integrity angle. These three angles collectively make the index. As far as India is concerned as an absolute value the index has improved marginally.”

When asked what the major shortfalls Chandrashekhar said, “If you look at some of the other countries like China and Japan where they score above us is because they have a minimum age after which you give access to the money. In India because of this socio-economic conditions and whenever we talk of NPAs we talked about you can’t touch till you are sort of 50-60 and everybody cried foul and said we need withdrawal."

Speaking about products for retirement security Mohit Gang said, “The number and plethora of products which are available in the market is like too many. Too many cooks spoil the broth so that is the case with pension products out there.”

Talking about creating corpus for retirement Gang said, “There is this PF which your company will deduct that is a good option. 8-8.5 percent tax-free is a fantastic rate to earn and people should definitely contribute and should not pull out from that when they move jobs or hop jobs. NPS has emerged as one of the finest pension products in the market today. It is the lowest cost product which is available with multiple options of investments.”