Retirement and pension organizations are balancing the reliability of long-duration benefit promises with the need to modernize how those promises are administered. Public sector and Taft-Hartley/multiemployer plans are responding to many of the same pressures—including funding complexity, cybersecurity, legacy systems, data fragmentation, workforce constraints, and rising expectations for digital service—but their transformation priorities and operating realities differ.
In this report, based on original primary research with retirement and pension organizations, we examine the strategic priorities shaping the market in 2026. The findings reveal a clear direction: organizations are pursuing controlled transformation rather than radical reinvention. They are strengthening the technology, data, workflows, and service capabilities beneath the operating model while preserving the governance, institutional knowledge, and accountability essential to participant and plan outcomes.
The most successful organizations will be those that connect foundation-first modernization to measurable improvements in efficiency, resilience, decision quality, and member and employer experience. The opportunity is not simply to replace legacy platforms or adopt emerging technologies; it is to create a more secure, connected, adaptable, and accountable way to operate.
Download this Thought Leadership to further understand:
- Why retirement and pension organizations are embracing a “retain-and-transform” approach to modernization—and where selective partnership can create value.
- How cybersecurity, core administration, data platforms, workflow, self-service, and payment systems form the foundation for more advanced analytics and AI.
- Where practical, governed applications of AI can improve operational efficiency, knowledge access, communications, decision support, and member service without displacing institutional accountability.
- In what manner public sector and Taft-Hartley/multiemployer plans differ in their transformation priorities—and why segment-aware strategies are essential for delivering meaningful outcomes.