June 2020

29Jun

Raiding the pot: how the pandemic has deepened the pensions crisis

The arrival of coronavirus in Australia in March left Marie Piggo struggling to put food on the table. The 32-year-old hairdresser from Sydney quickly saw two-thirds of her income disappear as customers stayed at home. Worse still, her husband lost his job. So when the Australian government announced in March it would allow young people like herself to raid their retirement pots to ease financial pressures caused by the coronavirus lockdown, she jumped at the chance. “We didn’t take...

June 29, 2020
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29Jun

US. Coronavirus puts company match under pressure

For the employers that suspended or reduced their matches in defined contribution plans, the coronavirus — which caused the economic havoc leading to cost-cutting — also looms over their efforts to reinstate these benefits. "If companies can bring back the match, they will," said Gregg Levinson, the Philadelphia-based senior director of retirement at Willis Towers Watson PLC. However, a new survey by his firm, conducted during the first half of June, shows that bringing back the match could take...

June 29, 2020
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29Jun

NPS and Allianz to set up $2.3 bn Asian property fund

The National Pension Service (NPS) is to launch a $2.3 billion property fund with Germany’s Allianz SE to invest in core real estate in Asia, with the pension scheme expected to deploy at least 30 trillion won ($25 billion) in new alternative investments by year’s end. Read also Dutch schemes fail to push management fees below 0.5% threshold The 50:50 co-investment fund will target landmark office buildings and logistics and residential facilities in big cities in Asia such as Australia,...

June 29, 2020
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29Jun

Changes To Social Security Insurance In China

China has updated their social security insurance policies with some noteworthy changes. Jurisdiction China What's new? 1. Faster social security card application process The State Council and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will facilitate a faster application process for social security cards through the nationwide integrated online government service platform. Read also WeBank, Huawei and KPMG Share Insights on Fighting COVID – 19 with FinTech 2. Merging of Maternity Insurance with Basic Medical Insurance The State Council...

June 29, 2020
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29Jun

Increasing compulsory superannuation would crush consumer spending

The Grattan Institute has attacked the legislated lift in the superannuation guarantee (SG) to 12%, claiming it would “leave an enormous hole in economic activity”: Legislated plans to increase the rate of compulsory superannuation contributions incrementally to 12 per cent of wages between 2021 and July 2025 would also exacerbate the economic problems caused by COVID-19, and should be abandoned. At least 80 per cent of the cost of higher compulsory super contributions comes at the cost of lower...

June 29, 2020
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26Jun

Actuarial and Financial Risks in Life Insurance, Pensions Pensions and Household Finance

By Luca Regis The recent regulatory changes, together with the increasing awareness of the variety of sources of uncertainty that affect the activities of insurance and pension funds, have generated increasing attention towards insurance risk management theory and practice. Against this background, this Special Issue collects relevant contributions on a variety of issues encompassing longevity risk modelling, solvency requirements, risk management, and risk sharing. This collection of papers provides insights, from both a theoretical and a practical perspective,...

June 26, 2020
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26Jun

Financing Africa’s Development: Paths to Sustainable Economic Growth

By Diery Seck This book examines the impact of financing on Africa’s economic development. By exploring various financial instruments including the role of alternative sources of funding like migrant remittances and illicit flows, it analyses the role of financing for Africa’s macroeconomic development and other development indicators such as infrastructure, transport, global trade, industrialisation, social services, external indebtedness and governance. By presenting and examining case studies on various African countries and regions, the respective contributions investigate the capacity...

June 26, 2020
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26Jun

Emerging economies and COVID-19 Closing in a world of informal and small companies

By Laura Alfaro, Oscar Becerra, Marcela Eslava Emerging economies are characterized by an extremely high prevalence of informality, smallfirm employment and jobs not fit for working from home. These features factor into how the COVID-19 crisis has affected the economy. We develop a framework that, based on accounting identities and actual data, quantifies potential job and income losses during the crisis and recovery for economies with different economic organization structures. Our analysis incorporates differential exposure of jobs across categories...

June 26, 2020
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26Jun

How People React to Pension Risk

By Nicolas Salamanca, Andries de Grip, Olaf Sleijpen We show that people exposed to greater pension risk are less likely to invest in risky assets. We exploit a reform that links people’s future pension benefits to their pension funds’ funding ratio — a measure of the fund’s financial health — making funding ratios a fund-specific measure of pension risk. The effect of pension risk is stronger for people who are better informed about their pensions, for retirees and...

June 26, 2020
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26Jun

México. Afores, las más rezagadas en inversión: FIAP

Las Administradoras de Fondos para el Retiro (Afores) de México son los fondos más rezagados en América Latina en invertir los recursos de los trabajadores en el mercado accionario y en títulos en el extranjero. De acuerdo con el reciente informe estadístico de la Federación Internacional de Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones (FIAP), las Siefores que operan en México no han incrementado sus posiciones en el mercado accionario, ni tampoco amplían su diversificación en instrumentos internacionales, por lo que...

June 26, 2020
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