Fintech’s Answer To The Global Retirement Crisis
Fintech innovators have the multi-trillion-dollar global retirement income market in their sights. An exciting example is the advent of blockchain-secured tontines as an alternative to traditional pensions and annuities.
What in the World is a Tontine?
A tontine is an investment pool managed in an actuarially fair way, according to a plan for distributing fully-funded payouts to investors. There are two key differences between a tontine and an ordinary investment. First, tontines investments are generally irrevocable. Second, account balances are not transferred to a member’s beneficiaries upon death. Instead, remaining assets are equitably apportioned among the pool’s surviving participants. Accordingly, monies forfeited by those who die increase the returns to those who survive.
These extra returns are referred to as “mortality credits.” In this way, tontines allow members to collect lifetime income by collectively self-pooling longevity risk among themselves. This obviates the need for (and cost of) an insurer as guarantor. Tontines are not insurance, though they can deliver lifetime income similar to payout annuities and pensions. Tontines simply cut out the middleman.
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