unsolicited advice: Pensions
When I worked at BlackRock, I learned two truths about money that have never left me.
The first was just how vast the Dutch investment market is — trillions in assets, complex strategies, a scale so large it makes “big finance” sound like a small phrase. The second was more personal: despite working at one of the most powerful investment firms on the planet, I had little interest in investing through my pension.
Like many people my age, my pension felt abstract, distant, and — more than anything — out of my control. Over the years, switching employers left me with pension entitlements scattered across five different funds. Each one sends me statements, but none of them make it easy to see the whole picture. It’s like trying to monitor your health with five separate fitness trackers, each with its own app and none talking to the others.
Meanwhile, the retail investment boom was everywhere. According to the AFM, the number of Dutch retail investors doubled between 2020 and 2023. Trading platforms like DEGIRO and BUX soared in activity. Social media filled with crypto wins, ETF “starter packs,” and day-trading bravado. By contrast, the €1.6 trillion sitting in Dutch pension funds was managed quietly by a handful of institutional managers — billions with your name on them, but not in your hands.
The Illusion of Control and the Distance Problem
On paper, that pension money belongs to you. In practice, your influence over it is about as direct as your influence over the weather. You can’t pick the stocks, the bonds, or the asset allocation. You can’t divest from an industry you dislike or double down on one you believe in.
Compare that to retail investing: you can put €100 into a green energy ETF by lunch and sell it for Bitcoin by dinner. The illusion of control is intoxicating, and in behavioral economics, perception often matters more than reality.
Rob Bauer, Professor of Finance at Maastricht University, put it plainly: “Pension funds invest on behalf of millions, but the connection between the owner of the capital and the investment decisions is almost completely broken.”
Psychology plays its part. Behavioral scientist Shlomo Benartzi once said: “Our future self is a stranger.” For a 25-year-old, the 67-year-old version of themselves is a fictional character. Why give money to a stranger? Retail investing sidesteps this entirely — it delivers instant feedback. Your portfolio moves, you feel something. You can act, and in acting, you feel in control. Pensions, by contrast, are slow, opaque, and emotionally flat.
The Societal Risk of Ignoring the Problem
The tragedy is that pensions are, by most measures, the best investment most people will ever make. Employer contributions are essentially free money, tax advantages amplify returns, and pooled risk shields you from catastrophic losses. Yet because they are invisible and inaccessible, they feel less “yours” than a volatile crypto trade.
This isn’t just a personal finance issue — it’s a systemic one. The Dutch pension system is among the strongest in the world, with assets worth roughly 200% of GDP. But it’s a collective promise: today’s workers fund today’s retirees, in exchange for the same security later. If younger cohorts disengage, contributions stagnate, and trust erodes, that promise weakens. Klaas Knot, President of De Nederlandsche Bank, warned in 2023: “The pension system can only remain robust if each generation maintains confidence in it. Without that trust, the foundation erodes from beneath.”
Too often, pension communication is treated as a compliance exercise rather than a trust-building mission. Campaigns are safe, bland, and designed to “raise awareness” without sparking action. Fiona Reynolds, former CEO of the Principles for Responsible Investment, said it best: “If people don’t understand where their pension is invested and why, you can’t expect them to value it — and you can’t expect them to defend it.”
Bringing Pensions Out of the Black Box
Fixing this doesn’t mean turning pensions into TikTok stocks. It means making them visible, tangible, and relevant. Real-time dashboards showing growth. A single account that follows you from job to job. Clear, accessible reporting on where the money is invested — and why. And framing pensions as “the safest, highest-return investment you’ll ever make,” because with employer contributions and tax benefits, that’s often true.
Your pension is already your biggest investment. The tragedy is that most people won’t realise that until it’s too late. And by then, the stranger they’ve been ignoring for decades — their future self — will be the one paying the price.
