The Couch Test

What Austrians see when they try to find out what their pension might be worth.

Ahead of Austria's 2027 pension reform, we set out to answer a simple question from a saver's point of view: if you sat down tonight to find out what your pension might be worth, what would you actually see?

From 2027, Austrian employees can move the severance capital they've been building up since 2003 into a fund-based retirement product. It can grow faster, but it can also fall in value, and once you've chosen your fund product, the money stays put until retirement. For the first time, one of those routes leads into a life-insurance policy the employee picks herself. That means the decision to give up a guarantee sits with the individual, not the employer, so what an insurer can actually show her really matters.

In July 2026 we looked at the public websites of eleven Austrian life insurers, together covering roughly 70% of the market. We stuck to what any customer can see before a login or an adviser appointment, and we re-checked everything live in September.

Here's what we found:

Six of the eleven showed a projected figure, and four of those let a customer build their own version of it. At the other five, no projection turned up anywhere in the online journey. And not one of the eleven showed what a bad scenario could look like while a saver was making up her mind. Exactly one insurer let you see a loss at all, and only if you knew to pick a negative return from a dropdown yourself.

The industry has noticed that Austrians struggle to picture their pension and has largely put it down to financial literacy. However, it's hard to picture a pension that can fall when almost nobody publishes the numbers that would let you see it.

Read the full report HERE.