March 2023

The 10 Years Before Retirement Are Critical. How to Be Ready

While retirement planning is a decadeslong endeavor, the way you handle your final decade before leaving the workforce will have a critical impact on how ready you’ll be when that day finally arrives. “It hits about 10 years out—this train is coming to me,” says Danielle Byrd Thompson, a financial professional at Equitable Advisors in Washington, D.C. “It’s like a time clock is starting.” Of course, that final stretch is far easier to navigate when the stock market cooperates. From 2009...

Canadian pension funds embrace ESG

Large Canadian pensions are making “impressive” progress on sustainable investments, according to the second annual Canadian Pensions Dashboard for Responsible Investing. The report examines the progress major Canadian pension funds have made in integrating ESG factors into their governance from 2020 to 2022. In just one year, the number of funds that have made public net-zero portfolio emission commitments by 2050 or sooner has grown from two to nine, which now accounts for or $1.8 trillion or 81% of total...

Hackers breach U.K. Pension Protection Fund, steal employee data

Hackers obtained data on some employees of the U.K.'s Pension Protection Fund after exploiting a third-party data transfer service, according to a fund spokesperson. The Pension Protection Fund manages £39 billion of assets for its 295,000 members, according to its website. The fund protects people with a defined benefit pension when an employer becomes insolvent. By exploiting the Go Anywhere transfer service, intruders compromised some employee data, Jenny Peters, a spokesperson for the fund, said in a statement. The hackers were...

French visit by Britain’s King Charles postponed due to pension protests

A visit to France by King Charles III, due to start on Sunday, has been postponed at the request of President Emmanuel Macron because of ongoing protests over pension reform. There has been widespread violence and unions have called a national day of protest on Tuesday. The French presidency said the postponement was decided after a call between Macron and the king on Friday morning. "Given the announcement yesterday of another national day of protests against pension reform on Tuesday March...

S. Korea’s pension fund posts 8.2% investment loss for 2022

South Korea's National Pension Fund reported a -8.2% investment return for 2022 and a 6.1% drop in assets to 890.5 trillion won ($706.4 billion). Domestic equity in the portfolio accounted for the biggest loss at -22.8%, followed by overseas equity at -12.3%, according to a statement by the Jeonju-based pension fund on March 2. "Domestic and overseas equity portfolios experienced a sharp drop in value due to ongoing market volatility at home and abroad triggered by the prolonged war in Ukraine...

UK. One third of people facing a drop in retirement standards

One in three savers have moved from an expected ‘moderate’ retirement lifestyle to a ‘minimum’ lifestyle, according to analysis by Wealth Wizards. The financial planning firm analysed data from more than 40,000 users of the Wealth Wizards Pension Guidance Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and found almost one in five pensioners are not on track for the living standards they would like in retirement. Additionally, the analysis of the data gathered over the last two years found one in three...

Americans less prepared for retirement amid financial uncertainty – Fidelity

Americans are less prepared for retirement than they were during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Fidelity Investment's 2023 retirement saving assessment study. According to the study, which was released Tuesday and examined the responses of 3,569 retirement savers that are run through Fidelity's retirement planning platform, the typical American saver is on target to have only 78% of the income needed to cover expenses during retirement. That is down from 83% at the beginning of 2020, when...

Britain says it won’t ditch global accounting rule to unlock pensions cash

Britain on Wednesday played down the possibility of diverging from a globally-set accounting rule which some lawmakers blame for encouraging pension schemes to prefer low risk government bonds over stock markets. City minister Andrew Griffith in February said a global accounting rule needed reviewing as it had become a "performance penalty" which trapped cash in pension schemes which otherwise could be invested in companies and the economy. The so-called IAS 19 rule requires company defined benefit pension schemes to "mark to...

France. Emmanuel Macron holds firm on pensions reform amid protests

Emmanuel Macron, France president, defended his unpopular plan to raise the retirement age on Wednesday as being key to repairing the public finances but acknowledged public anger over his government’s decision to pass the law without a parliamentary vote. “Do you think I enjoy doing this reform? No,” said Macron in a televised interview. “But there are not a hundred ways to balance the accounts . . . this reform is not a luxury or a pleasure, it’s a necessity for the country.” Read also...

Sweden’s Biggest Pension Fund Loses $2 Billion in US Bank Crises

Sweden’s largest pension fund, Alecta, is facing losses of almost $2 billion as a result of a failed investment strategy that made it one of the biggest shareholders in two collapsed US banks and another that is embroiled in the ongoing banking crisis. The scale of the losses has become clearer since the private pension group sold all of its First Republic Bank stake at a loss of 7.5 billion kronor ($728 million), according to Chief Executive Officer Magnus Billing....