September 2017

España. El fin de los asesores financieros

Un 85,4% contra un 22%. Ésa es la diferencia en 10 años entre el resultado de una inversión en un fondo de inversión indexado al Standard and Poor's -que básicamente sube y baja según ese índice -y otro formado por 5 fondos de fondos, es decir, fondos de inversión que invierten en otros fondos de inversión. Con esas rentabilidades, ¿quién puede querer un asesor financiero? Las cifras de más arriba no son arbitrarias. Son el resultado de una apuesta. En...

Portugal. Government wants to squeeze foreign pensioners too

Portugal’s finance minister, Mário Centeno, acknowledged on Friday that the government has been looking into introducing a minimum income tax bracket for foreign pensioners for some months, to ensure a “good tax relationship” with other European countries. Following an informal meeting of euro zones finance ministers in Talin, when he was asked about an article in Friday's edition of business newspaper Jornal de Negócios saying the government was studying changes to the income tax rules for non-habitual residents because of...

UK. Expats face post-Brexit pension ‘cliff edge’ warns influential MP

The chair of the influential Treasury committee has called for urgent action to address the risk pension payments to expatriates from UK insurers may be blocked after Brexit. Nicky Morgan (pictured), chair of the influential committee of MPs, has written to the chancellor, to draw attention to the issue and ask if it would be addressed in the upcoming round of talks between the UK and EU, the Guardian reports. The problem centres around passporting rights, which allow UK and...

Nudging Retirement Savings: A Field Experiment on Supplemental Plans

By Robert L. Clark, Robert G. Hammond, Melinda Sandler Morrill, Christelle Khalaf Although supplemental saving plans can be an important part of an individual's financial security in retirement, contribution rates remain low, particularly among those with lower salaries and less education. We report findings from a field experiment that distributed an informational nudge containing information on key aspects of the employer-provided supplemental saving plans of older public employees in North Carolina. Among workers participating in a supplemental plan, individuals who...

Recasting Social Canada: A Reconsideration of Federal Jurisdiction Over Social Policy

By Sujit Choudhry (Center for Constitutional Transitions) Who speaks for Canada? For the past fifty years, during both the expansion and the retraction of the Canadian welfare state, the politics of social policy has revolved around this single question. In this article, I step back from the politics of social policy to reflect on the constitutional framework within which that politics occurs. My focus is the scope of the federal government’s jurisdiction over social policy. A distinctive feature of Canadian...

Drawing Down Retirement Savings – Do Pensions, Taxes and Government Transfers Matter Much for Optimal Decisions?

By Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald (Independent), Richard J. Morrison (Independent), Marvin Avery (Human Resources and Skills Development), Lars Osberg (Dalhousie University) This paper examines the importance of pensions (employment and social security), taxes and government transfers for alternative retirement savings drawdown strategies, based on Canadian evidence. Using as examples single elderly Canadians at the 10th, median and 90th percentiles of the income distribution, we use a lifetime utility framework to evaluate an illustrative set of six popular drawdown strategies. Our longitudinal dynamic...

Why UBS Is Bringing Its Climate-Proofing Strategy to Proxy Voting

UBS Group AG increased its backing of shareholder climate resolutions this year, according to Christopher Greenwald, head of sustainable investing research at UBS Asset Management. UBS, which has more than $1 trillion of its $3.7 trillion in assets under management in sustainable and responsible strategies, made the firm-wide change after a collaboration with a client. The Swiss firm joins other asset managers, including State Street, Blackrock and Vanguard, that are stepping up their focus on climate change in discussions with...

¿Cuánto necesitan ahorrar los mexicanos para tener un retiro digno?

Para que un mexicano se retire de su vida laboral sin preocupaciones, se recomienda que empiece a ahorrar aproximadamente el 15% de su sueldo mensual desde que comienza a trabajar, aseguran especialistas de Seguros Monterrey New York Life. Sin embargo, los mexicanos que están inscritos en algún sistema de seguridad social ahorran alrededor del 6.5% de su percepción económica al mes, comentó Oscar Meza, gerente comercial del producto Visualiza en la aseguradora. “En México, los ahorros nos son parte de la...

Fondos de Asia buscan rendimientos en Latinoamérica

Los inversionistas asiáticos se están volviendo más aventureros a medida que caen los rendimientos de los bonos en su región, estimulando a algunos a aventurarse en América Latina, un área con un historial de inestabilidad política e incumplimientos ocasionales. “Ha habido muchos más emisores en dólares de Latinoamérica que llegan a Hong Kong y Singapur para comercializar sus ofertas”, dijo Ben Yuen, director de inversiones de renta fija de BOCHK Asset Management, una división de Bank of China Ltd. “Los...

South Africa’s pension fund chief says allegations he misused funds are spurious

The head of South Africa’s state-owned pension fund dismissed as spurious allegations made by a newspaper on Friday that he had misused funds and improperly raised salaries for some executives. Daniel Matjila has been chief executive officer of Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which manages nearly 2 trillion rand ($152.30 billion) of civil servants’ pensions, since 2014. He told Reuters he would meet board members later on Friday to discuss the allegations made by newspaper Business Day. “These are spurious allegations,”...