December 2021
22Dec

UK. Workplace pensions bounce back after Covid-19 effects

On the go: Workplace pension contributions grew by more than 15 per cent in the second quarter of 2021, when compared with the previous year, due to contribution levels recovering after the pandemic, according to the Office for National Statistics. The ONS’s latest quarterly survey on funded occupational pension schemes in the UK, published on Tuesday, showed that contributions in private sector employee and employer defined contribution schemes grew by 19 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively, in Q2...

December 22, 2021
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21Dec

US. PennPSERS pushes $1.1 billion into alternatives

Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System, Harrisburg, announced $1.1 billion in new alternative fund commitments. The $72.5 billion pension fund's board at its Dec. 17 meeting approved commitments of $300 million to Brookfield Global Transition Fund, a real assets fund investing across sectors including industrials, renewable power and utilities, managed by Brookfield Asset Management; €200 million ($226 million) to ICG Europe Fund VIII SCSp, a mezzanine fund managed by Intermediate Capital Group; and $125 million to Bain Capital Special Situations...

December 21, 2021
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21Dec

UK. Pension dashboard project announces commercial partners

The Pensions Dashboards Programme has partnered with three commercial dashboard providers with which to work during its initial testing phase. The PDP has selected Aviva, Moneyhub and Bud to work alongside the Money and Pensions Service’s non-commercial dashboard in the initial test phase of the pensions dashboards ecosystem. The test phase will run for six months from December 2021 and see the chosen providers prepare to connect their dashboards to the central digital architecture. The three potential providers — an insurer, an...

December 21, 2021
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21Dec

Proposed changes to the U.S. retirement system are still on the table in Congress. Here’s where things stand

Two years after Congress passed a law that ushered in improvements to the U.S. retirement system, lawmakers’ efforts to make further enhancements are moving forward — albeit slowly. There’s bipartisan backing for measures in both the House and Senate that would build on the 2019 Secure Act, which aimed to increase both the ranks of savers and retirement security. While progress on the proposals has been slow, there’s hope for action in 2022, say supporters. “At the end of the first...

December 21, 2021
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20Dec

UK. Demands to delay rises in the state pension age

Plans to raise the state pension age from 66 should be shelved because we are not living as long as previously expected, a new report has suggested. Current plans would see the age at which people are eligible for the state pension go up to 67 by 2028, and then eventually to 68. Consultant LCP says life expectancy has stalled and no changes should be made for 30 years. The government has just launched its latest review of the state pension age. At...

December 20, 2021
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20Dec

Leftist millennial Gabriel Boric, that vowed to reform pensions for the poor, is elected president of Chile.

Leftist lawmaker Gabriel Boric, 35, on Sunday became Chile’s youngest-ever president on promises of installing a “welfare state” in one of the world’s most unequal countries. The former student activist only just met the required minimum age to run in the presidential race, seven years after being elected to his first political job as a member of Chile’s Chamber of Deputies. On Sunday, he prevailed over far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast, an ultra-conservative lawyer who had promised to cut taxes and...

December 20, 2021
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20Dec

PinBox pushes to bring more global workers into retirement savings tent

Gautam Bhardwaj is aiming to get 100 million workers in the informal sectors of India's economy — from Uber drivers to farmers to domestic servants — to start saving for retirement over the next five years. For the co-founder and director of Singapore-based pension-tech provider pinBox Solutions Pte. Ltd., that amounts to a quick pivot from an initial success in Rwanda — where in close collaboration with the government, pinBox helped 1.5 million informal sector workers, a quarter of that...

December 20, 2021
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20Dec

UK. Enthusiasm for green pensions fails to translate

Although most savers say they want their pension to be invested responsibly, very few people auto enrolled into workplace schemes have moved their investments to sustainable funds. That is according to research by Barnett Waddingham which found one in five savers (20%) said they thought ESG funds should be the default option for workplace pensions, regardless of return. A further 26% said they thought this should be the case so long as the return is the same as a non-ESG fund. Meanwhile,...

December 20, 2021
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17Dec

U.K. offers pension trustees guidance on climate standards

The Pensions Regulator issued guidance Thursday to help U.K. pension trustees meet new standards for climate-related governance and reporting of both risks and opportunities. Part of trustees' responsibility is making sure that the external advice they get is relevant and competent, the regulator said in a news release. "We recognize that the governance and reporting of climate-related risk is relatively new, so trustees may be more reliant on external experts while they build their scheme's capability in this area," said David...

December 17, 2021
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17Dec

New EU proposal aims to make long-term investment funds more attractive

Money managers operating in the European Union anticipate an increase in alternative investment opportunities as regulators relax rules for European long-term investment funds. Under the latest proposal to reform the Capital Markets Union — an ongoing initiative aimed at creating a single pan-European financial market — the European Commission is revising how money managers can set up and market European long-term investment funds, known as ELTIFs. These collective investment strategies — currently only offered by certain alternatives money managers —...

December 17, 2021
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