September 2020

11Sep

2019 World Pensions Forum Held in EU Capital Before G7 Summit

By M. Nicolas J. Firzli The 8th World Pensions Forum was held 23-24 May: 130 pension executives and supranational experts representing $12 trillion in combined assets convened in Brussels to discuss “Effective Asset Ownership”. The Forum was pleased to note that some of our ideas were taken up by the Finnish presidency of the Council of Europe and the G7 Steering Committee – notably the empowerment of women entrepreneurs and the notion of institutional co-investment in private equity and sustainable...

September 11, 2020
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11Sep

The Impact of Social Security on Pension Claiming and Retirement: Active vs. Passive Decisions

By Rafael Lalive, Arvind Magesan, Stefan Staubli We exploit a unique Swiss reform to identify the importance of passivity, claiming social security benefits at the Full Retirement Age (FRA). Sharp discontinuities generated by the reform reveal that raising the FRA while imposing small early claiming penalties significantly delays pension claiming and retirement, but imposing large penalties and holding the FRA fixed does not. The nature of the reform allows us to identify that between 47 and 69% of individuals are...

September 11, 2020
Articles, Pension design,
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11Sep

Gender Gap in Pension Income: Cross-Country Analysis and Role of Gender Attitudes

By Anna Veremchuk, University of Tartu The aim of this paper is to study the gender pension gap in Europe based on the newest EU-SILC data from the 2018 wave. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it provides evidence on factors shaping the gender pension gap in a large number of EU countries. Second, it analyses the relationship between the pension gap and: (1) the coverage of occupational (second pillar) pensions and (2) gender attitudes. The main factor contributing to gender...

September 11, 2020
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10Sep

Spanish Government looking at incentives for delaying retirement

The Spanish Government is looking at providing incentives for those who carry on working after the age of 65 while taking steps to stop high earners from taking early retirement. Read also Greece.Pay as you go for auxiliary pensions In his appearance on Wednesday before the Toledo Pact parliamentary commission, Inclusion and Social Security minister Jose Luis Escriva said his department’s intention is to encourage people to delay their retirement. through a redesign of the extra payments for those who...

September 10, 2020
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10Sep

South Africa. There’s a pensions train smash coming: Magnus Heystek

South Africa is facing a ‘pensions train smash’, says Magnus Heystek, director of Brenthurst Wealth Management, as a number of factors including the poor JSE, a weak economy and new regulations are set to collide. Heystek said in a webinar on Wednesday (9 September), that this collision course is the result of a number of problems in the wider pensions industry which have been building for years. He added that ordinary South Africans are starting to see the problems...

September 10, 2020
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10Sep

US. Pension fund, MIT launch social investing project

The Massachusetts state pension fund is teaming up with the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative to try to improve the data available to investors who want to make decisions based on things like the way a company treats its workers, its carbon emissions or its product safety record. As socially responsible investing expands rapidly across the globe, the Aggregate Confusion Project with the Pension Reserves Investment Management Board aims to cut through the noise around Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)...

September 10, 2020
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09Sep

£15bn boost if UK scraps pensions triple-lock, says think tank

An industry think tank has said that replacing the pensions triple lock with “earnings smoothing mechanism” could save up to £15bn ($19.56bn, €16.59bn) from the covid-19 bill. But the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) added that this would reduce average state pension income by 2% from 2021. The triple lock means the state pension increases by the highest of the increase in average earnings, inflation or 2.5%. This comes as rumours continue over the future of the pensions triple-lock, with chancellor...

September 9, 2020
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09Sep

US. What has COVID-19 done to our retirement savings?

COVID-19 has disrupted life as we knew it, upending our daily lives, threatening the health of many, and exacerbating the financial stress already facing many families. The short-term impacts have been substantial and have received considerable attention, but we should not lose sight of the potential for long-term financial consequences, especially on retirement security. Read also US. DOL´S mixed message for plan sponsors Short-term relief, long-term consequences As millions of Americans found themselves out of work and many small businesses...

September 9, 2020
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09Sep

Australia. Super must not become a meagre pension: Labor

Superannuation should not replace a meagre government-funded pension for a meagre privately-funded one, Labor's financial services spokesman Stephen Jones will argue on Wednesday. He will also demand that the government release its long-awaited retirement income review to provide better information in the current debate on superannuation. In a speech to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, Mr Jones will say that by 2065, there will be about three workers for every one retired person, down from a ratio of...

September 9, 2020
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09Sep

Using behavioral insights to make the most of emergency social protection cash transfers

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries across the globe have been adapting social assistance policies to support their populations. In fact, since March 2020, 139 countries and territories have planned, implemented, or adapted cash transfers to support their citizens. Cash transfers specifically make up about half of the social protection programs implemented to address the pandemic. Now more than ever, it’s crucial that such programs are designed to maximize impacts. Behavioral insights can be mobilized as a cost-effective...

September 9, 2020
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