Decumulation investment strategies need to be approached differently to accumulation, Gallagher co-head of investment, UK, Tara Gillespie has said, urging providers to “not be afraid to be different” when developing retirement investment journeys.

Speaking at the recent PIMFA Women’s Symposium 2026, “my ask to the industry and anyone designing products for retirement decumulation is to treat it differently; don't think about it like accumulation,” Gillespie said.

“It means different considerations around bringing different asset classes and risk factors together. It should be as simple as possible, but it also needs to be as complex as necessary to optimise that journey.”

According to Gillespie, considerations when designing an optimal decumulation strategy include fees, sequencing risk and managing downside.

Also important is managing longevity risk, she added, highlighting longevity pooling options such as collective defined contribution (DC) to mitigate this, or annuity product innovations such as deferred annuities or fixed-index annuities.

Another factor to consider, Gillespie said, is behavioural biases, where the retiree gets spooked by investment volatility and takes “an unexpected withdrawal at the worst possible time – no investment strategy is going to save that”.

“We've got to, as an industry, make sure we're creating ways to encourage better decision making,” Gillespie added, highlighting industry efforts such as default retirement pathways.

Gillespie also gave the example of a “dynamic investment strategy”, which de-risks investments at the start of the retirement journey.

“This may seem counter-intuitive because at the start of the journey you want to be maximising risk so that you benefit from compounding, but actually, if it's going to create a behavioural downside and make someone feel more uncertain because perhaps two years into their retirement journey their portfolio falls significantly, then perhaps [de-risking at the beginning of retirement] is something to factor into the design of the investment strategy”, she suggested.

“My biggest plea to the industry… is don't be afraid to be different. Just because everybody else is doing it one way does not mean that it's the best way for your clients. And actually, if you want to take a stand and do something slightly different… it can be a better outcome than the rest of the world,” Gillespie concluded.

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