March 2024
25Mar

UK’s Conservatives will commit to pensions triple lock, says Hunt

Britain's ruling Conservative Party would commit to keeping the so-called triple lock for increasing state pensions, finance minister Jeremy Hunt said on Sunday, seeking to woo older voters ahead of an election expected later this year. With the opposition Labour Party holding a strong lead in opinion polls, Hunt stepped up efforts to draw a dividing line between the parties by emphasising the Conservatives' commitment to lower taxation. Under the existing pension triple lock system, the government has promised to raise...

March 25, 2024
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25Mar

U.S. pension funds sue Allianz after $4 billion in coronavirus losses

Pension funds for truckers, teachers and subway workers have lodged lawsuits in the United States against Germany's Allianz, one of the world's top asset managers, for failing to safeguard their investments during the coronavirus market meltdown. Market panic around the virus that resulted in billions in losses earlier this year scarred many investors, but no other top-tier asset manager is facing such a large number of lawsuits in the United States connected to the turbulence. In March, Allianz <ALVG.DE> was forced...

March 25, 2024
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25Mar

Nursing homes can’t meet the care needs of an aging population

Where are we going to get the workers to care for us? How are we going to pay them? Long-term care is one of the major challenges facing an aging society. Care can take the form of a nursing home, formal care provided in the community or home, or informal care provided by family or friends. KFF recently released a really nice summary of the state of play on the nursing home front in the process of describing a proposed rule...

March 25, 2024
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25Mar

South Africa. Two-pot system: how the state is dealing with its own funds

There are three pension funds in the country, including South Africa’s largest fund, that are not governed by the Pension Funds Act, and National Treasury needs to deal with these separately in implementing its famous two-pot retirement system. I refer to three government pension funds, in particular the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), which holds more than R2.3 trillion in assets and has almost 1.3 million active members and another 475 000 pensioners and beneficiaries. This fund is constituted under...

March 25, 2024
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22Mar

U.S. PRT transactions hit all-time high in 2023 – Aon

U.S. pension risk transfer transactions totaled $45 billion and set a new record for number of transactions for 2023, according to a new report from Aon. There were a total of 773 transactions, which include pension buyouts as a result of retiree liftouts and terminations, along with a small number of buy-ins in which liabilities are insured but remain with a plan sponsor, according to the report. Of that total, there were 453 terminations, 310 liftouts and 10 buy-in transactions, accounting...

March 22, 2024
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22Mar

Thousands of UK women owed pension payout after ombudsman’s Waspi ruling

Thousands of women, potentially hundreds of thousands, are owed compensation because of government failings related to the way changes to the state pension age were made, a long-awaited official report has said. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said those affected should be compensated. But the recommended payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950 a person fall far short of the £10,000-plus that campaigners were calling for. Depending on the numbers affected, the total bill could still end up being in the...

March 22, 2024
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22Mar

Chief Risk Officers Say Cybersecurity Most Pressing Risk: Survey

In an inaugural EY/Institute of International Finance (IIF) global insurance risk management survey, cybersecurity was ranked as the highest concern for chief risk officers. CROs surveyed said the top five risk types or risk management types for the coming year were: 53% – Cybersecurity risk 35% – Insurance risk (e.g., underwriting risk, including lapses, catastrophic (CAT) and longevity risk) 32% – Business model change/transformation 26% – Credit risk (including country, sovereign and concentration risk) 24% – Tied between capital allocation, interest...

March 22, 2024
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21Mar

2023 US life statutory results: Individual annuity growth hits 21-year high

A resilient domestic economy, rising interest rates and ample supply of attractive products led to outsized expansion in individual annuities during a year of otherwise mixed growth in business volumes for the US life insurance industry. According to estimates from S&P Global Market Intelligence, individual annuity direct premiums and considerations surged by 21.8% in 2023. This data, aggregated from individual entity reports available as of March 11, marks a third straight year of double-digit growth, and the most substantial annual...

March 21, 2024
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21Mar

UK’s Hunt Says State Pension and Benefits Are ‘Under Review’

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt indicated that reforms to the UK state pension and welfare benefits are being considered as the government scrambles to fund increases in defense spending and boost economic growth. Testifying to lawmakers in the House of Lords, Hunt said the triple lock — which guarantees that the state pension rises by the highest of inflation, average earnings or 2.5% — was “under review.” Continuation of the policy is subject to improving the government’s two goals of...

March 21, 2024
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21Mar

Global fertility rates to plunge in decades ahead, new report says

A new study projects that global fertility rates, which have been declining in all countries since 1950, will continue to plummet through the end of the century, resulting in a profound demographic shift. The fertility rate is the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime. Globally, that number has gone from 4.84 in 1950 to 2.23 in 2021 and will continue to drop to 1.59 by 2100, according to the new analysis, which was based on the Global Burden...

March 21, 2024
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