Mexican pension funds urge system review but reject raising retirement age

Mexico's pension fund industry called on Oct. 19 for a review of the country's retirement system, citing official data that shows fertility below the replacement rate, and rejected raising the retirement age as a fix. The Asociación Mexicana de Afores (Amafore, the Mexican association of pension fund managers) said intergenerational support in the system has to stay "reasonable and not excessive."

Guillermo Zamarripa, Amafore's president, presented the position at a press conference ahead of Encuentro Amafore 2026, an industry meeting scheduled for Nov. 10 and 11. El Economista reported that Zamarripa said Mexico is already living the demographic transition that gave rise to the Sistema de Ahorro para el Retiro (SAR, the retirement savings system). Expansión reported that the INEGI Encuesta Intercensal 2025 found the average number of children born to women aged 12 and older fell from 2.1 in 2020 to 1.9 in 2025. Amafore said the shift implies "a longer-lived population and potentially smaller future generations, with effects on savings, employability and retirement planning." The debate reaches binational households: Afore accounts hold retirement savings of Mexican workers whose families live on both sides of the border.

Amafore listed the Pensión del Bienestar for older adults, the Fondo de Pensiones para el Bienestar and the 2020 reform to the Social Security Law, which raised employer contributions, among the intergenerational transfers it wants reviewed. "There cannot be so much intergenerational subsidy because there are fewer and fewer young people of working age supporting a group of older adults," Zamarripa said. He argued that raising the retirement age does not fit Mexico's labor market. Amafore figures show formal employment at about 15% for workers aged 25 to 30 and 9.5% at ages 50 to 55. According to the pension regulator CONSAR, 120,900 pensions have been authorized under the Afore regime, and 120,553 of them are minimum guaranteed pensions averaging 5,297 pesos.

The Encuentro Amafore 2026, titled "The architecture of retirement: longevity, individual savings and economic growth," will run Nov. 10 and 11. The agenda turns on how longer lives and lower fertility reshape retirement income, the issue Amafore says will define the next stage of the pension debate.

Sources: Ante envejecimiento del país Afores piden revisar sistema de pensiones, pero descartan elevar la edad de retiro · México ya está viviendo la transición demográfica para la que fue creado el SAR: Amafore

This story was written with the help of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.