October 2023

Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index 2023

By CFA Institute & Monash University  The Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index benchmarks 47 retirement income systems around the world, highlighting challenges and opportunities within each. Botswana, Croatia and Kazakhstan were added to the mix this year. We also used updated data from the OECD and added some new questions to the integrity sub-index. The Index is made up of three sub-indices, including adequacy, sustainability and integrity, to measure each retirement income system against more than 50 indicators. Each year...

Asian Retirement Markets 2023: Building Security Against Uncertainty

By Shaun Ng As Asia’s retirement pension funds evaluate the funding status for the many approaching their golden years, alternative investments offer diversification and returns. Major pension funds in Asia have been diversifying further into alternatives, driven by the need to deliver solid returns and combat inflationary pressures as they face a looming underfunding crisis. However, nearly 41% of Asian pensions surveyed by Cerulli cite a “limited understanding” of alternatives, while one-third say they lack in-house expertise when investing in alternatives....

The Vanguard Retirement Outlook: A national perspective on retirement readiness

By Fu Tan, Fiona Greig, Andrew S. Clarke, Kevin Khang, Kate McKinnon & Victoria Zhang The global retirement landscape is changing. As populations age, government retirement benefits are under pressure. At the same time, the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution workplace retirement plans means that workers bear more responsibility for managing capital markets risk and turning accumulated savings into retirement income. And many workers have no access to a workplace plan. In the United States, the figure is about...

September 2023

The Future of Global Retirement

By Andrew Evans & Will Wynne Smart is a world-leading retirement technology provider. Our mission is to transform retirement, savings and financial wellbeing, across all generations, around the world. Launched in 2015, our technology platform – Keystone – serves the needs of retirement savers globally, and we are now active on four continents. Keystone is specifically designed to help governments and financial services organisations to serve their citizens' and customers' retirement saving and spending needs. Smart’s team of engineers, researchers and user...

2023 BlackRock Read on Retirement

By Black Rock If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that burnout is real. Three years on, it turns out it’s not just a workplace side effect. BlackRock’s 2023 Read on Retirement™️ survey reveals that financial burnout is on the rise – and one for employers to watch. Today, only about half of workplace savers feel on track to retire with the lifestyle they want – a double-digit drop compared to last year and a worrisome trend since 2021. Encouragingly, though, this drop in...

Aging in Latin America and the Caribbean: social protection and quality of life of older persons

By Natalia Aranco, Mariano Bosch, Marco Stampini, Oliver Azuara Herrera, Laura Goyeneche, Pablo Ibarrarán, Deborah Oliveira, Maria Torre Retana Reyes, William D. Savedoff & Eric Torres Ramírez  In this report, we analyze older persons quality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean, its relationship with social protection policies, and how these policies must adapt to respond to population aging. We create a measure of quality of life of older persons which combines healthy life expectancy and income security. For...

2023 Retirement Plan Landscape Report

By MorningStar  Millions of Americans rely on the U.S. retirement system to save and invest for their futures. Similarly, the system depends on new employers offering retirement plans to replace plan closures. Expanding access to employer-sponsored retirement plans is essential to ensuring Americans are saving enough for the future, but it’s also necessary for the current system to address its weakness. In the second iteration of our annual report, we take a comprehensive look at the overall health of the...

2023 401 (k) Participant Study

By Charles Schwab  • The 2023 401(k) Participant study is an online study conducted by Logica Research. • The study was conducted from April 19 through May 2, 2023. • 1,000 401(k) plan participants completed the survey. • Ages 21-70 • Work for companies with 25+ employees that have 401(k) plans • Currently contribute to their companies’ 401(k) plans • Survey respondents include participants served by approximately 15 different retirement plan providers. • The typical (median) survey length was 10 minutes. Read book “here”

Retirement security improves but few feel more secure

By Natixis Investment Managers  Retirement security is looking better for most developed countries, with rising rates, easing inflation, low unemployment in key markets – and with the pandemic fading in the rearview mirror. In fact, nearly all of the countries represented in the 2023 Natixis Global Retirement Index received a higher overall score for the first time in a decade. But while these improvements suggest that retirement security feels more broadly attainable, individuals in many countries are not as optimistic, according...

Extending contribution-based social security schemes for workers in the informal economy and self- employed in Nepal

By International Labour Organization This brief was prepared by André F. Bongestabs and Suravi Bhandary based on the technical note produced by Pierre Plamondon, Senior Actuary, with the support of ILO’s Actuarial Services Unit, as part of the technical support provided by the ILO to the Social Security Fund of Nepal. The brief discusses various considerations that needs to be placed during the design and implementation of contribution-based social security for workers in the informal economy and self-employment. It is...