JUST hours after an insurer pitched tax breaks and new incentives as a way to widen life coverage and pension uptake, pension specialist Constance Hall used the same conference stage to argue that Jamaica’s retirement and insurance problems run far deeper. She said many of the workers most at risk would get little help from deductions alone.

Speaking at the Insurance Association of Jamaica’s 2026 conference at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel, Hall delivered one of the sharpest interventions of the event, arguing that tax policy alone cannot fix Jamaica’s weak retirement security as employers, insurers and the National Insurance Scheme come under growing strain.

“Stop telling them about tax deductions because they don’t pay any tax on a $2-million salary. [A] $2-million salary is tax-free,” Hall said.

“You cannot ask somebody, or you can’t tell somebody that you’re paying $2 million to that they should find a way out of that $2 million to pay rent for the houses that you are building, to pay for the insurance on the house. They cannot afford it,” she continued.

The line cut directly across proposals raised earlier by JN Life General Manager Hugh Reid, who said the insurance industry is preparing submissions for the Government by year-end, including tax incentives for insurance products, health savings-style accounts, and renewed calls for automatic pension enrolment.

Reid argued that in a country where households must choose between today’s bills and future protection, incentives can help change behaviour. But Hall’s counterpoint was that for many lower-paid workers, there may be little behaviour to change if the incentive itself carries limited value.

Boardrooms hold part of the answer

Hall did not stop at critiquing tax breaks. She redirected the debate to corporate Jamaica, arguing that businesses have steadily moved away from treating retirement as part of the job.

“There was a time when employers considered the providing of a pension to somebody who had worked with them three years to be their responsibility. We stopped doing that. Now we have some stupid commercials that tell people you need to save for your retirement — you know the little commercials that we’re getting out, [the ones whwere] all of us are getting our little likes on LinkedIn and whichever of the feeds you use. That’s how we’re tackling the retirement crisis that we have!” Hall said in a pointed rebuke of current industry messaging.

“We have one single, solitary way out of this. We have got to get back to employers acknowledging that retirement is their business, is their responsibility,” she continued.

Hall argued that employers already know how to structure benefits because they routinely package salary, vacation leave, sick leave, health insurance and group life cover.

“You have 10 per cent into a pension plan, that’s a benefit. You have a group life and a group health. You don’t have to separate pension from everything else and tell them that they have to agree to contribute and you [the company] will match it if you feel like it,” Hall said.

In practical terms, Hall argued that part of the pension gap lies less with legislation and more with boardroom choices. Although her presentation was largely centred on retirement planning, she repeatedly tied the issue back to the insurance industry itself.

“If we do not start to make the changes now, what’s going to happen in due course? You are going to have a society that’s mostly old people and they can’t pay rent, they don’t have no house, they can’t buy groceries. Guess what else they can’t buy? They can’t buy insurance,” she said.

“Already, the average retiree cannot afford health insurance. It is time for you all to look into yourselves and ask, ‘What are we doing? Why are we alienating what is going to be our biggest market?’ ”

Her warning comes as Jamaica’s pension industry grows in assets but remains narrow in reach.

Coverage remains narrow

At June 2025, pension assets stood at $829.23 billion, up from $779.9 billion a year earlier, according to Financial Services Commission data. Yet active pension membership represented just over 12 per cent of the employed labour force. The system is managing a growing pool of capital while most workers remain outside formal pension schemes.

Hall warned that even among those who are covered, many discover too late that the balances they built are weaker than they assumed.

“People get their statements, and they look at their account and it looks like they have a lot of money, but it’s not until they actually retire that they realise it doesn’t really buy anything,” she said.

She also noted that Jamaica has moved from more than 800 private pension plans to around 400 over the last two decades. That suggests the system has consolidated over time, but not broadened fast enough to match the country’s demographic reality.

NIS enters a harder phase

Hall’s most serious warning may have been reserved for the National Insurance Scheme, still the main retirement support for many Jamaicans.

She said roughly half of the employed labour force contributes to NIS, though not all contributors pay consistently enough to receive the full pension. For lower-income workers, she said, NIS remains the central pillar of retirement income. But that pillar is facing a tougher future.

“We are way past the point where we can think of the elderly population being supported by the working age group because we are going to have too many old people to have young people to support them,” Hall said.

“We have to rethink our planning. We can no longer rely on collecting NIS contributions to pay NIS pensioners. We can no longer rely on our children taking care of us. We have a declining fertility rate. When there were eight of us, at least one or two were going to step forward and do it. Now there are two children,” she continued.

Putting a timeline on when today’s policy delays become tomorrow’s financing problem, Hall said the current projection places the life of the NIS fund around 2047. She argued that delaying recommended reforms to the NIS — including gradual increases in contribution rates to $10,000 monthly and phased adjustments to the retirement age to 75 — would only make the eventual correction more difficult and more costly for workers, employers and the Government.

“We have to do it now because the problem is that every three years, the amount by which we need to increase the contribution goes up,” Hall said.

In the meantime, she noted that fund managers would need to work harder as the system moves closer to the point where pensions may be paid increasingly from investment income rather than simply fresh contributions.

“Managers of the fund need to keep working because, at some point, we’re going to have to start paying pensions out of the investment income. And when we get to the point where we can no longer do that, then we’re going to have to cut benefits. And when we’re going to do the benefits cut I won’t be around to say it, so I’m saying it now…we’ll get to a point where we’ll have to means test,” she warned.