When she realized she wanted to quit her job at a San Francisco software company, Anna Rider was taking care of two babies: a food blog that she wanted to grow, and her actual child — the son she had five months ago. So Ms. Rider left, becoming one of the tens of millions of Americans who gave their notice in the past year and joining the cultural moment that has come to be known as the Great Resignation. She not...
Social Security benefits make up about 30% of elderly Americans’ incomes, according to the Social Security Administration. For some beneficiaries, it can be 90% or more. Yet many people do not think of those earned benefits, and the monthly checks that come with them, as a personal financial asset, according to Social Security expert Larry Kotlikoff, author of a new book titled “Money Magic: An Economist’s Secrets to More Money, Less Risk and a Better Life.” The money you pay into the...
Asset owners and managers across the U.K. and Europe continued moving away from Russian investments following the invasion of Ukraine. The Swedish Pensions Agency on Monday placed an immediate ban on purchasing Russian funds. "We are stopping the possibility of buying the funds that focus most heavily on investments in Russia. This is done to protect pension savers," said Erik Fransson, head of fund management for the SPA, in a news release. SPA has 2.1 trillion (232 billion) Swedish kronor...
By Edward Siedle Across the nation politicians are naïvely calling for state pensions to dump their Russian investments to punish the country for its invasion of Ukraine. Since state pensions have in recent years agreed to let Wall Street fund managers keep secret their investment holdings, states don’t even know the Russian assets they hold. Yesterday, state Attorney General Dave Yost publicly called upon Ohio’s five public employee retirement funds to divest themselves of Russian financial holdings to further punish the...
South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, recently acknowledged that “South Africa needs a new consensus to deal with poverty, unemployment and inequality”. Despite the government’s efforts to address poverty through the provision of state grants, it’s still on the rise. In 2020, it was reported that half of the population was experiencing hardships that have pulled individuals and households into poverty. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the South African economy had been growing very slowly, with high rates of unemployment and increasing...
Pension scheme trustees will naturally be considering what, if any, steps they may wish to take as the economic effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine have begun to be felt worldwide, and as further economic sanctions and restrictions have been imposed on Russia and Belarus. There are two issues for trustees to consider: 1.whether any of their investments are now subject to sanctions; and 2.whether, in the light of sanctions and the economic and political consequences arising from the Russian invasion of...
A growing number of pension funds are shunning investments in Russia following the country’s military invasion of Ukraine. Norway’s minister of finance said he will ask the Government Pension Fund Global, Norway’s $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, to freeze all its investments in Russia immediately, and also divest from Russia. Read also From Japan to the US, sanctions threaten top pension funds’ Russia assets “Given the way the situation has evolved, we consider it necessary for the fund to divest its Russian...
Around 2.4 billion women of working age are not afforded equal economic opportunity and 178 countries maintain legal barriers that prevent their full economic participation, according to the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2022 report. In 86 countries, women face some form of job restriction and 95 countries do not guarantee equal pay for equal work. Read also Retired women in South Africa carry a huge burden of poverty Globally, women still have only three quarters of the legal...
Pension schemes are being used to hit long-term Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals, which experts say may put your savings at risk. Pension schemes in the UK contain over £2.5trn of wealth, and the industry is considered a key part of the shift towards clean energy, according to the Government. It says pension schemes include the “largest single group of institutional investors in the UK, with significant influence over the flow of investments in the economy.” Coupled with their long-term investment...
After 14 years at Principal, Luis Lozano, a champion of open architecture, joined Valmex in February 2021. Since then, the institutional-investments head has been working to enhance the pension segment of Valmex’s business, as he told Fund Pro Latin America in an exclusive interview. “It is necessary to develop the voluntary pension market, especially for those with higher income who are not fully covered under the traditional and obligatory pension market (via the Afores). In this segment, replacement rates are...
