It's the summer of 1996.
The debate about ageing is in full swing, but the concerns are very different from the ones we discuss today. Back then, many people worried about reaching retirement in good health. Governments worried about pension costs. Businesses worried about people leaving the workforce too early. "Old age" was often understood as something that started around seventy. The underlying assumption was simple: life follows a relatively predictable path. You study, build a career, retire, and hope to enjoy a number of healthy years after that.
Thirty years later, almost everything about that picture changed.
Today, many of us start our day by checking an app that tells us how we slept. We track our heart rate, our exercise and even our stress levels. Someone entering the workforce today may have five different careers rather than one. They return to university at fifty. They start a business at sixty. For some people, what used to be one lifelong relationship may become several chapters of life. Families are increasingly spread across cities, countries and continents.
Most importantly, we are living longer. For the first time in human history, large numbers of people can realistically expect to live close to, or even beyond, one hundred years. By 2050, according to the Pew Research Centre Analysis of UN projections, the global population of centenarians is projected to grow eight-fold to around 3.7 million.
An amazing achievement for celebration. Yet, it forces us to confront a new reality. The challenge is no longer the prospect of dying too soon. The challenge is learning how to live well for much longer than society was designed for: Will I be able to retire comfortably? Will I remain healthy? Who will take care of me if I need support? How will I help ageing parents while also supporting children who may remain financially dependent for longer?
These are no longer questions for people approaching retirement. They are questions that increasingly concern people in their thirties and forties as well.
This is why we need to move away from the all too often negative language of ageing towards a more constructive conversation about longevity. Longevity is one of the great success stories of our time. The real question is not whether we will live longer. The question is whether we are prepared to thrive in a 100-year life; to make those additional years meaningful, healthy and fulfilling.
One observation from outside the longevity debate has stayed with me. In his essay The Adolescence of Technology, Dario Amodei describes adolescence as a period during which capability develops faster than maturity. Humanity suddenly gains access to something powerful, but the surrounding structures have not yet caught up.
I believe something similar is happening with longevity. We have become remarkably successful at extending life expectancy. Yet our pensions, healthcare systems, housing models and even our assumptions about work and retirement were largely built for another era.
In other words, we have gained decades of life, but we have not yet fully adapted to what those decades represent. There is a longevity gap. Not because people are unwilling to prepare, but because many of our assumptions still belong to a world where life was shorter and more predictable.
Closing this longevity gap may become one of the defining societal tasks of our generation. Can we align the longevity gap with the health gap and wealth gap? How do we prepare for a longer independent social life, in good health and with sufficient wealth?
How do we close the longevity gap?
1. Why a 100-year life starts long before old age
Our expectations of humanity are high. This generation is being asked to absorb responsibilities once spread across decades and multiple lifetimes, all at one time; at the same time, we are building careers, we’re raising children, supporting ageing parents and preparing for potentially decades more life.
The impact of an ageing society needs to be put on the table much earlier than it is today. Firstly, we need to explore the optimal way to accelerate financial education around this topic. But the conversation should not be limited to pensions. It should also include health, care, work, community and the way people want to keep contributing across a longer life.
The conversations we need to have sooner
One of the biggest challenges around longevity is that people often start thinking about it far too late. We know that starting conversations earlier can significantly improve retirement outcomes. Yet most people only begin to engage seriously with these questions once retirement becomes visible on the horizon. Small decisions made in your thirties can have a profound impact on life in your seventies, eighties and nineties. Saving earlier. Investing in your health. Continuing to learn. Remaining flexible professionally. The challenge is therefore not simply financial education.
This is also where the experience of insurers matters. As an insurer active in life, health and pensions, Ageas sees these questions emerging long before people retire. Market research in Belgium suggests that one in three people over 50 have a pension pot of just EUR 50,000. (Ageas 2026, internal market research) That reality supports the importance of starting the conversation around financial preparedness much sooner.
Starting discussions even 10 years earlier can significantly improve retirement outcomes. But success is dependent on our ability to integrate this topic naturally into everyday life through employers, through education, and through small nudges in the digital environments people use and trust. The right solutions need to be offered at the right time.
Preventive healthcare as a cornerstone
In responding to the challenges of an ageing society, the focus is on three primary areas: age, wealth, and not forgetting health. To thrive in the latter years of life a strong, preventative healthcare system is a priority. Chronic diseases already account for a large share of premature deaths and disability, often influenced by factors and lifestyle choices that have accumulated over decades. Prevention therefore cannot be treated as a side topic. It is one of the most important ways to turn longer lives into better lives.
The evidence is striking. The 2024 Lancet Commission shows that almost half of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by tackling 14 modifiable risks across a lifetime. Stroke data tells the same story: the American Stroke Association estimates that up to 80% of first strokes are preventable through screening, lifestyle shifts and better risk management.
This matters because people are not passive. According to Ageas market research on the Belgian market, 75% of respondents would be willing to adapt their habits if it helped prevent future illness. The challenge is not only awareness, but also about building systems that make healthier choices easier, more accessible and more sustainable in real life.
Employers can no longer stay on the sidelines
It would be impossible to consider longevity without considering pensions provision. The current pension system is not fit for purpose in a 100-year life scenario. Models that rely solely on government intervention are coming under increasing strain. Ignoring this reality and continuing to proceed as is, will simply compound the pressure on future generations. It is not sustainable. Employers have a critical role to play in offering solid, forward-looking pension schemes that provide additional security and help close the gap. But their role goes beyond pension contributions. In a longer life, work becomes one of the places where financial wellbeing, health prevention and care responsibilities meet. Ageas research shows that 52% of working Belgians are willing to finance longterm care solutions if employers make them available as flexible benefit options. Governments can and should play a vital role in making pension savings attractive. The solution depends on close collaboration between the private and public sectors. This is a shared responsibility, where businesses must actively contribute to long-term financial wellbeing through employer-sponsored solutions and individual pension savings schemes that complement public systems.
Will we grow old together?
We are living longer, but we are also living quite differently to our predecessors. Increasingly people spend parts of their lives in smaller households or alone. The trend is very clear. UN Household Size and Composition data shows rising numbers of people living alone across countries, and Eurostat confirms that single adults without children are now the largest household type in the European Union: 76.1 million households in 2025.
Longevity is not only about how we live. It is also about who will support us as we age. Ageas research shows that 24% of Belgians aged 50+ provide informal care on a daily or weekly basis. Yet more than 95% say they want to grow old at home, while fewer than half manage to do so (Ageas 2026, internal market research). As we look to the future a shift towards formal care is expected due to a “double squeeze”; a rising number of dependents requiring assistance paired with a potentially decreasing number of available informal caretakers.
For younger generations this creates new and often unspoken pressure: the emotional weight of staying connected, of caring from a distance, of trying to bridge the gap. By 2030 single-person households will dominate in many urban areas. Yet most of us still crave connection, proximity, and a sense of belonging. This is where new models are emerging. Ones that acknowledge both independence and interdependence. Integrated living environments. Community based care. Hybrid solutions that combine housing, services, and social interaction. In some Asian markets these kinds of models are already scaling. Elsewhere they are still taking shape.
2. Why age tells us less than it used to
Perhaps one of the most important lessons of longevity is that age tells us less than it once did. Historically, fifty or sixty often acted as a trigger for certain products and services. Yet two people of the exact same age can now have entirely different lives. One may be preparing for retirement. Another may be launching a new business. A third may be caring for both teenagers and elderly parents. Their needs are unlikely to be the same. This is why we need to move beyond age as our primary lens.
Longer lives create room for second careers, later-life entrepreneurship, intergenerational learning and a stronger economic contribution from people who remain active well beyond traditional retirement ages. Longevity should therefore not be framed only as pressure on systems. It is also a chance to rethink contribution, learning and purpose across a much longer life. Treating each customer as an individual is important.
As insurers we become increasingly aware of age bias and the risk in defining the needs of individuals by age alone. When people stop recognising themselves in the solution offered by virtue of age, institutions lose the ability to truly understand the populations they serve. So, the lesson we have embraced is to stop categorising people by age.
This is where Data and AI can play such an important role. Data and AI allow us to look at behaviour, life events, preferences and health indicators to ensure greater relevancy. It allows interventions to happen at the right moment in this extended life cycle and not based on age alone. As lives become less linear, people pause their careers, restart, or even combine roles. Pension products assume continuity. Protection products assume stability. Financial solutions often assume a clear before and after, but a 100-year life does not look like that. People’s lives no longer follow a straight line, and neither should their financial solutions. So, hello to the world of flexibility. Welcome to reality of adaptability. And goodbye to age as the primary trigger for what comes next.
3. The challenge nobody prepares us for: turning savings into life
There is one aspect of financial wellbeing that rarely receives enough attention. For decades, people are encouraged to save. Then suddenly, they are expected to start spending. Moving from accumulation to decumulation may sound like a technical concept, but it is deeply human. Products have historically focused far more on Savings and less on de-accumulation solutions. After spending forty years building financial security, many people struggle with the idea of drawing down those savings: Can I afford it? Will I outlive my money?
Long-term care adds another layer of uncertainty. Ageas research shows that 42% of respondents feel overwhelmed by the administrative burden of organising care. Only 13% have set up an extrajudicial protection mandate, while 41% do not know what it is. This is exactly the sort of practical, emotional and administrative complexity that people rarely prepare for until they are confronted with it. (Ageas 2026, internal market research)
Yet people often only engage with them when retirement is approaching. Earlier conversations and better guidance could make a significant difference. Because financial confidence is not built in the final years before retirement. It was built over decades.
How can we be better at longevity?
The longevity challenge is often described as a demographic trend. In reality, it is a societal redesign challenge.
As an insurer, Ageas is well placed to contribute to this redesign. This is not only because of our global footprint across Europe and Asia, or because of our experience in life, health and pensions. What makes Ageas particularly relevant is our local anchoring. Longevity does not look exactly the same in Belgium, Portugal, China or Vietnam. The role of family, the strength of public systems, cultural expectations around care, the maturity of pension markets and the way people think about ageing differ from one society to another.
There is no single blueprint for a 100-year life. What works in one market will not necessarily work in another. There is no room for a one-size-fits-all approach. Our role is to understand the reality behind the facts and figures and help develop solutions that fit people’s lives.
For insurers this means moving from an age-based approach to a life-event based approach. In the future, the question will not be: “How old are you?” It will be: “Where are you in life, and what do you need to navigate the next phase successfully.”
That shift changes the role of insurers. The largest contribution of insurers may not be in carrying risk once things go wrong. It may increasingly lie in increasing the chance that people remain healthy, financially independent and socially connected for longer.
No insurer, government or employer or healthcare provider can shoulder the burden alone. A society prepared for a 100-year life will require new coalitions between public institutions, employers, education providers, healthcare organisations, technology companies, financial institutions and local communities. The longevity challenge is ultimately not a pension issue, a healthcare issue or an insurance issue. It is a societal issue. Success will depend on our ability to connect sectors that still too often work in parallel rather than together.
As part of our own commitment to transforming insurance in this 100-year life scenario, Ageas applies five clear rules of engagement:
1. Start the conversation early and long before people think they need it.
2. Make preparation part of everyday life by bringing health, wellbeing, and financial awareness closer to where people live, learn and work
3. Support people through every stage of life not just at retirement but throughout life’s transitions
4. Design for real human behaviour with simpler choices, better guidance and solutions that work in real life not just theoretically.
5. Champion long-term resilience to help build financial security, maintain independence, and live with confidence.
Let’s now step into the future, from the vantage point of a centenarian, assuming we do the right things now.
It’s the summer of 2056: we will look back on the 2020’s as a critical turning point. This was the first generation to feel the strain of living longer than our systems, savings and social contracts were designed for. But the changes that followed, modernised pensions, new models of care, preventionled health systems, and financial products built for multistage live, reshaped the arc of ageing. The longevity gap didn’t disappear, but we learned to adapt and meet it with design, not fear.
