May 2017

S.Korea’s pension fund says to raise overseas investment to 40 pct by 2022

South Korea's National Pension Service (NPS), the world's third-largest pension fund, said on Thursday it will raise overseas investment to about 40 percent of assets by 2022, as it continues to diversify investment to minimise risk. The NPS, which had 564 trillion won ($504.34 billion) under management as of February, had 27 percent of assets invested overseas as at the end of 2016. The fund, which estimates assets of $2.2 trillion by 2043, said in a statement it aims to have...

México. Expertos alertan daños a sistema de Afores por sobrerregulación

El actual sistema de ahorro para el retiro está sobrerregulado, tiene fallas de origen y es incongruente, pues al tratar de fortalecer la seguridad en los traspasos de cuentas entre las Administradoras de Fondos para el Retiro (Afores), con la intención de evitar fraudes, se está promoviendo un mercado anticompetitivo que afecta usuarios y a las firmas más pequeñas, indicaron expertos a La Razón. “El problema de la regulación actual es que es incongruente, pues no promueve un mercado de...

The Impact of Partisanship in the Era of Retrenchment. Insights from Quantitative Welfare State Research

By Frank Bandau (University of Bamberg) Does government partisanship matter when it comes to the size and generosity of the welfare state? While the answer to this question is clearly positive for the ‘golden age’, there is so far no clear-cut answer with regard to the subsequent era of welfare retrenchment. This is by no means due to a lack of research. Quite to the contrary, a substantial number of macro-quantitative studies published over the past 15 years have addressed...

The Evolution of ESMA and Direct Supervision: Are there Implications for EU Supervisory Governance?

By Elizabeth Howell (University of Cambridge) The European Securities and Markets Authority (‘ESMA’) was established over six years ago. It, and its sibling bodies for banking, and the insurance and occupational pensions sector, emerged from the ashes of the crises, and the agencies have been the topic of much discussion in academic scholarship from a variety of perspectives. This article provides a new situating of ESMA within the broader policy context. Employing empirical observations, and rooting it within the related...

Chile. Fondos de pensiones llegaron a 186 mil millones de dólares en primer trimestre

La Superintendencia de Pensiones (SP) publicó su informe trimestral con las inversiones de los Fondos de Pensiones al cierre del primer trimestre de 2017 y a marzo de este año el valor total de los activos administrados alcanzó los 186.241 millones de dólares, lo cual representa un aumento de 14 por ciento respecto a igual mes de 2016. Según el reporte, la inversión en activos nacionales representa un 60,6 por ciento del total de los Fondos de Pensiones, totalizando 112.764...

México. Afores multadas deben dar la cara a sus clientes

Las cuatro Afores que fueron multadas por la Comisión Federal de Competencia Económica (Cofece) por mil 100 millones de pesos por haber realizado prácticas monopólicas deben dar la cara y garantizar a sus clientes que un caso como este no volverá a ocurrir en el sistema, dijo la Comisión Nacional del Sistema de Ahorro para el Retiro. "Hay un efecto reputacional para las cuatro empresas y tendrán que atacarlo a través del trabajo cotidiano. Tendrán que dar la cara y...

US. Trump’s proposed retirement changes would have major impacts on current feds and retirees

It’s happened before; lawmakers and think tanks have offered their own proposals to change the federal retirement system. Despite a few initial worries, current federal employees and retirees have remained relatively unscathed. Yet that could change next year. Federal financial experts are sounding the alarm bells on the major changes to the federal retirement system included in President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget — proposals that they say would leave a significant impact on both current retirees and employees and...

UK. Government austerity demands that we die within our means

As we move towards the general election, we are paralyzed by what is probably the biggest single issue affecting ordinary people in the country: austerity. We are unable to fully understand both the economic madness of austerity and the true scale of the human cost and death toll that ‘fiscal discipline’ has unleashed. Since coming into power as Prime Minister, Theresa May has made a strategic decision not to use the word ‘austerity’. Instead she has adopted a more palatable...

Nigeria. ‘First Guarantee Pension Board is Ready to Resume Business’

The Board and Management of First Guarantee Pension Limited, one of the licensed Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) in Nigeria, said owners of the company are ready to resume normal business operations, six years after suspension of the company’s former board and management by the insurance sector regulator, the National Pension Commission (PenCom). Vice Chairman of the company, Nze Chidi Duru, who stated this during a courtesy visit to THISDAY Newspapers, said that the board is ready to take back the...

US. Obama, Buffett or Trump: who’s right about the cost of retirement investing advice?

In a stunning reversal, the Trump administration will not seek to further delay an Obama-era investment rule designed to put an end to costly, conflict-filled retirement advice. The so-called fiduciary rule will require anyone selling retirement investment advice to put their clients' interests first and to plainly disclose fees. It was set to take partial effect on April 10, but the incoming Trump administration had forced a delay until June 9. In an Op-Ed, Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta gamely...