August 2021

Why Tontines Should Be a Piece of the Retirement Solution

By Jasmin Sethi Retirees are often faced with the fear of outliving their assets. This fear, also known as longevity risk, has been eased by the availability of annuities, specifically annuities that I’ve termed in my paper as guaranteed income products, or GIPs, that offer fixed payments until death. One would think that a product offering fixed payments for life would be more popular among retirees, but the reality is that Americans choose not to purchase annuities. Why? A big factor...

Here’s The Only Retirement Risk That Really Matters To You

Chances are at some point in your retirement saving (or spending) life you’ve been asked a question or two about your appetite for risk. For a while, back in the era of Modern Portfolio Theory, the whole concept of “risk” and the investor was the cat’s pajamas. In the old days they even had entire questionnaires designed to extract this information from you without you knowing it. That is until it became clear those little quizzes had about as much...

Pensions, Income Taxes and Homeownership: A Cross-Country Analysis

By Hans Fehr, Maurice Hofmann & George Kudrna This paper studies the role of pensions and income taxes in determining homeownership and household wealth. It provides a cross-country analysis, using tax and pension policy designs in Germany, the US and Australia. These developed nations have similar incomes per capita but very different homeownership rates, with the US and Australia having much higher homeownership compared to Germany. The question is to what extent the observed differences in homeownership are induced by...

Mega-IRAs, Boon or a Bane?

By Albert Feuer Peter Thiel reportedly converted a 1999 Roth IRA investment of $1,700 in PayPal “founder’s shares,” into assets that appeared to be worth $7 billion on June 30, 2021. There are serious questions whether this IRA and other Mega-IRAs are entitled to the IRA tax benefits. The IRS should have the resources to challenge the tax exemption of any Mega-IRAs appearing to violate the current law. These Mega-IRAs will disappear when the IRS prevails. There should also be...

On The Investment Strategies in Occupational Pension Plans

By Frank Bosserhoff, An Chen, Nils Sørensen, Mitja Stadje Demographic changes increase the necessity to base the pension system more and more on the second and the third pillar, namely the occupational and private pension plans; this paper deals with Target Date Funds (TDFs), which are a typical investment opportunity for occupational pension planners. TDFs are usually identified with a decreasing fraction of wealth invested in equity (a so-called glide path) as retirement comes closer, i.e., wealth is invested more...

Un balance parcial del impacto de la pandemia en el empleo en México

Por Rodrigo García Verdú Comparada con la recesión de 2008-09, la recesión provocada por la pandemia del COVID-19 ha tenido un mayor impacto en México en cuanto a pérdida de empleo se refiere. Si bien la discusión pública se ha centrado en la rápida recuperación del empleo formal privado a partir de mediados de 2020, el impacto de la pandemia ha sido mayor en el empleo informal, particularmente en el empleo subordinado con percepciones no salariales y en el empleo...

Chile. AFP: retiro del 100% de fondos tardaría años en pagarse, destruiría el sistema y colapsaría al mercado

Un panorama crítico para el mercado financiero, con efectos directos para las personas asociados a mayor inflación y alzas en las tasas de interés, junto a un nuevo remezón en el sistema previsional que puede en definitiva terminar con su existencia. Este es el escenario descrito tanto por el Banco Central como por la Superintendencia de Pensiones en la Comisión de Constitución de la Cámara Baja, donde se discuten seis propuestas fusionadas en un proyecto de retiro parcial y...

US. Climate Change and Benchmarking Risk for Retirement Plans

Institutional Investors Generally  don´t mine coal, make cement or indiscriminately strip large forests. But the companies in which they invest might be engaged in such activities that experts say will prove incompatible with the shift to a lower-carbon world. And, they add, a retirement plan’s holdings of these at-risk investments could have negative consequences for plan participants.   Plan Exposures Climate change risks can affect plans in several ways, says Therese Feng, vice president of research for The Climate Service, a climate...

China’s pension funds post surge in investment returns in 2020

Chinese pension funds posted an investment return rate of 15.84% last year, nearly doubling the 20-year average of 8.51%, a report from the National Council for Social Security Fund showed on Wednesday, partly due to a jump in domestic stock markets. China, the world's most populous country, has been looking to boost its investment returns and size of its pension funds, to cope with a looming demographic crunch as population growth slows. To counter the economic impact of rapid ageing and...

South Africa proposes a mandatory pension system

Minister of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, has published a Green Paper on comprehensive social security and retirement reform for public comment. It includes a mandatory pension and insurance system among the proposals. Read also Warning over major retirement change for South Africa The department said that the absence of a statutory arrangement providing pensions and insurance is the most obvious gap in South Africa’s social security system. Read also European Union: Putting A “PEPP” In The Step Of European Pension Providers? “Such an arrangement...