June 2020

Pension giant and BNP Paribas AM unite for climate lobbying effort

AP7, BNP Paribas Asset Management and the Church of England Pensions Board have partnered with specialist advisory firm Chronos Sustainability to develop a framework to guide responsible corporate climate change lobbying The Swedish pension fund, French asset manager and English group have teamed up to better assess whether corporate lobbying is aligned with climate change goals, as set out in the Paris Agreement. The project will develop on existing efforts to create a credible and systematic means of measuring...

IBM Trials Blockchain Platform For Primary Teachers ’ Pensions in Bangladesh

IBM has started an initiative to create a distributed ledger technology (DLT) based framework that will form the back bone of digital pension program for Bangladeshi primary school teachers. The PoC (Proof-of-Concept) consists of a permissioned network of teachers and other partakers backed by the IBM Blockchain Platform, with pension data loaded on the blockchain to guarantee unalterable data keeping and offer safety guarantees to teachers partaking in GBB (Grameen Bank of Bangladesh) government supervising IT policy in the...

Multinational Firms Aim to Standardize Their Retirement Plans

More multinational companies are moving to standardize the retirement plans they offer across countries, aiming to level the playing field for employees and boost efficiency and compliance. A 2018 study by the American Benefits Institute and international-benefits consultant Aon found that almost three-quarters of the more than 250 multinational companies surveyed had at least some level of centralization in their employee-benefit programs, compared with just 40% in 2015. Some 83% said they expect to be somewhat centralized. Read more...

UK Pension Market Report 2020

By Research and Markets In 2019, UK pension funds received total contributions of £241 billion, representing a 10% rise over the level of 2018. In 2019, contributions to workplace pensions represented 70% of total contributions and this is expected to rise to 71% in 2020. In 2019, the publisher estimates that 2.4 million new pension products were sold to members of the public. In 2019, just over 21 million employees in the UK had a workplace pension with most of...

The Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic for Pensions

By Charles Sutcliffe COVID-19 and the lockdowns have had a big global economic effect, as well as increasing mortality. We examine the effects of COVID-19 and the resulting relaxations of pension regulations on pension schemes. Those who transfer their pension or withdraw cash from their pension pot while asset prices are depressed by COVID-19 are losers; as are members of defined benefit schemes with a deficit whose employer fails due to COVID-19. The increased mortality from covid-19 will have...

South African Individual Retirement Savings: An Analysis of the Social Factors

By Gizelle Willows This study's primary aim is to determine whether members of a South African tertiary institution's retirement fund are en route to have sufficient retirement savings. Secondly, the results are analysed between different social factors namely: age, gender, race, education level, marital status, and cost of employment. Survey data and information received directly from the retirement fund were used as inputs in a customised model. This method was unique to this study, that is, it was able...

Emergency Funds in the Wake of the Coronavirus

By Margaret Ryznar The CARES Act targeting the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic allows taxpayers to withdraw up to $100,000 from their retirement savings, such as section 401(k) plans, without the typical 10% penalty for early withdrawal. However, retirement accounts do not make for ideal emergency funds. This Article therefore advocates that future legislation should incentivize separate savings funds. Source: SSRN

México. Pensiones: califican como error revertir sistema de Afores

Revertir las reformas que dieron origen al sistema de pensiones hace 23 años sería un error porque es el único mecanismo de ahorro para la vejez que tienen los trabajadores, coincidieron especialistas de retiro. Ayer, el Presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador dijo que el sistema de Afore fue dañino para el País y que impulsará cambios en el Congreso para dar marcha atrás la reforma de pensiones, como ocurrió con la educativa. Siegfried Seedorf, profesor de la Facultad de...

Colombia. Bolsas y petróleo caen ante panorama sombrío

Futuros S&P registran su mayor caída en un mes tras declaraciones del presidente de la Reserva Federal Jerome Powell que sugieren que la pandemia puede infligir un daño más duradero a la economía, bolsas europeas bajan con el índice Stoxx Europe 600 teniendo su mayor descenso en cinco semanas; Bloomberg Dollar Index avanza. El rendimiento de los Tesoros a 10 años sube. Índice EMFX cae por primera vez en cinco días, mientras que WTI baja ante los negativos pronósticos de...

World’s Worst Stock Market Risks More Pain From Pension Selling

The world’s worst-performing stock market this year is at risk of an even steeper drop from a proposal to let Colombians tap pension savings during the coronavirus crisis. The government has held talks with private pension funds regarding an “important proposal” that would allow workers to draw down their retirement accounts, Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla told lawmakers Wednesday. The government has made “advances” on the issue, though hasn’t reached a decision, Carrasquilla said. The plan would likely need congressional...