Benefits brokers advising employer clients on retirement plan design have new survey data to bring to the table and it puts plan sponsors squarely in the frame.
Most American workers agree that employers have a responsibility to offer retirement plans with options for converting savings into guaranteed income that never runs out, according to new research from TIAA released this week to coincide with National Retirement Security Month.
That near-universal mandate is landing at a moment of rising retirement anxiety. The 2026 TIAA Retirement in the Age of AI and GLP-1s Survey, conducted by KRC Research among 1,000 U.S. adults aged 18 to 65 between July 27 and July 31, 2026, finds that eight in 10 Americans have financial fears about living longer.
Those fears are driven by two forces reshaping the retirement calculus: artificial intelligence (AI) and GLP-1 medications, drugs whose potential to extend healthy lifespans is simultaneously exciting and financially alarming.
The survey findings lay out a retirement anxiety that is broad, deep, and squarely aimed at the workplace plan as the first line of response.
Fifty-three percent of respondents worry most about withdrawing too much from their retirement savings and running out of money before they die - compared to just 21% who worry about withdrawing too little. Forty-three percent say they are not confident that traditional retirement planning methods adequately account for longer lifespans, a figure that rises to 47% among Gen Z workers and to 49% among women.
The top financial fears associated with a longer life reinforce why. Forty-six percent cite running out of money to cover basic day-to-day living expenses; 42% worry about not having enough disposable income to enjoy the extra years; 41% fear affording the high cost of long-term medical, memory, or nursing care; and 30% worry about becoming a financial burden on their children or family members.
Tim Pitney, Managing Director and Head of Lifetime Income Distribution at TIAA in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sees those numbers as a brief for plan redesign.
"Plan sponsors are getting a little more paternalistic than maybe they had before, providing more income solutions and a landing spot for people that want to stay within the retirement plan," Pitney told IBB. "For years, we've been talking about this concept of a retirement tier built in as a plan design mechanism - and what that means is having that landing spot, to give people a reason to stay in the retirement plan."
Part of what makes the employer mandate so consequential is the scale of longevity miscalculation that the TIAA Institute's research has consistently documented. Workers tend to anchor on average life expectancy at birth (roughly 78 averaged across males and females) without accounting for what reaching retirement age actually does to those odds.
"You get to 65, you survived any other major healthcare issues or disasters, and now your longevity is not 78 - it's more akin to like 87 or 88," Pitney said. "And then for a couple, for one to survive, it's into the 90s, 94, 95 or so."
For benefits brokers, that recalibration matters because plan sponsors are designing retirement tiers for employees who routinely underestimate how long those tiers need to perform. A plan built around getting workers to age 65 with a lump sum is a different plan from one designed to sustain income through a couple's joint life expectancy into the mid-90s.
That design gap is where brokers and consultants can add the most value and where the industry has historically been weakest. "As an industry, we've been trying for decades to make the common worker an investment expert," Pitney said. "And I think it's difficult."
The survey's data on AI and GLP-1s adds a layer of complexity that is directly relevant to brokers advising plan sponsors with multi-generational workforces.
American workers are nearly evenly split on what AI will do to healthcare costs in retirement: 27% believe AI will increase costs by generating expensive new breakthrough treatments; 22% believe it will lower costs through greater efficiency; 20% expect no significant financial impact; and 32% simply do not know.
That uncertainty sits on top of a healthcare cost anxiety that is already acute. Seventy-seven percent of survey respondents identify the rising cost of healthcare as a direct threat to their retirement plans, behind only the rising cost of living and inflation, cited by 80%.
AI's workforce impact divides workers along generational lines in ways that complicate plan design. Forty percent of Americans overall view the rise of AI in the workplace as a threat to their retirement plans.
Among Gen Z workers, 42% are extremely or very concerned that AI could disrupt their careers or reduce their earning potential before they retire comfortably, the highest level of concern of any generational cohort. For plan sponsors managing a workforce that spans Baby Boomers to Gen Z, those divergent anxieties point toward layered retirement solutions rather than a one-size approach.
"If AI shortens the working career, that shortens the amount of time that workers can save through workplace retirement programs and puts an even bigger burden on the individual to save for themselves but then be able to turn that into sustainable income in retirement," Pitney said.
There is a market signal embedded in the survey findings that benefits consultants should be surfacing directly with plan sponsor clients.
According to LIMRA, retail annuity sales reached a record of $464.1 billion in 2025.
"Think about people who have an entire retirement package with their workplace, maybe paying all-in costs of 10 to 20 basis points," Pitney said. "They're taking their money out and immediately going out and buying an annuity. But if you don't have the kind of income services within those plans, that's what's going to happen."
That rollout dynamic is both a fiduciary signal and a broker opportunity. Plan sponsors who have spent years driving down investment and recordkeeping costs are effectively watching participants undo that work at the point of retirement because the plan has not built a credible landing spot.
The retirement tier concept Pitney describes is, in part, a retention mechanism: give participants a reason to stay in the plan at retirement, and the costly retail rollout becomes unnecessary.
TIAA is scaling that model. By the end of 2026, the firm expects to serve 1,000 unique institutions using customized solutions with embedded lifetime income in default investment options. It projects those solutions will reach approximately $100 billion in assets and touch around one million participants by next year.
"An annuity doesn't care what AI does," Pitney said. "Regardless of what happens, whether medical advances extend longevity or don't move the needle, whether interest rates rise or fall, that guaranteed income payment will continue to arrive."
For brokers advising employer clients in 2026, that is the conversation the data is now demanding: not whether plan sponsors should address the retirement income gap, but how and how soon.
