麦肯锡-美国退休行业正处于十字路口（英）

Financial Services PracticeThe US retirement industry at a crossroadsFee compression and other factors are squeezing retirement solutions providers’ profitability, but ancillary products and services offer a new avenue for growth.This article is a collaborative effort by Jimmy Zhao, Jonathan Godsall, Matt Leo, and Philipp Koch, with Deniz Lenger, representing views from McKinsey’s Financial Services Practice.April 2025The past decade has been exceptionally favorable for US defined contribution (DC) retirement plans. The retirement solutions providers—also known as retirement recordkeepers—that administer DC plans on behalf of various employers have experienced consistent revenue growth over this period, as plans have become more accessible and equity market performance has been strong.Now, things are changing. The retirement industry is approaching a tipping point due to demographic shifts, industry developments, and increased competition—all of which are hitting retirement recordkeepers’ profitability and reshaping how they do business.DC plans, which were designed for hyperefficient wealth accumulation, are now in a decumulation phase: As baby boomers retire and their withdrawals outpace younger savers’ contributions, the DC system is showing net outflows—a trend that’s expected to intensify as the number of people turning 65 is projected to peak in 2026–27.1Moreover, the industry’s entire business model has shifted. Retirement recordkeepers’ revenues from administration fees have been declining as they have substantially reduced these fees to win new business. At the same time, cross-subsidized business models have become more common, as some retirement solutions providers view the recordkeeping part of their business as a way to generate additional revenue streams, such as those from wealth and asset management. The retirement and wealth management industries have been converging quickly, with retirement solutions providers moving to diversify their revenues with ancillary products such as brokerage accounts and services such as financial advice, for assets within employer-sponsored plans and outside these plans.However, while the size of the DC market shows a consistent upward trend, the underlying economics of the system has undergone a significant transformation below the surface. Total revenues generated from the DC system—including investment products and recordkeeping—grew by $11 billion between 2013 and 2023, from $28 billion to $39 billion. Over the same period, the DC system created $45 billion in new revenues from retail wealth management. These figures underscore the industry’s shift from product-centric to participant-centric strategies (Exhibit 1). Retail wealth includes rollovers into individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and crossover sales to plan participants of products such as brokerage accounts, both of which we explore in more detail later in this article. In contrast to the significant growth in retail wealth, the indust