The song “God Part II” on the album “Rattle and Hum” by U2 has the lyrics: “The rich get healthy, while the sick stay poor.” Bono sung those words in 1988. Since then, a number of researchers have tackled what exactly is the link between wealth and health, and why. At first glance, one would expect a simple explanation: people with more money live longer. Clearly such a relationship cannot be strictly linear, as people don’t fall dead if...
A combination of the super guarantee supplemented with a means tested Age Pension incurs a significantly lower budget cost than providing a similar retirement income via a more generous publicly funded age pension, new independent analysis by Rice Warner Actuaries shows. The Rice Warner report found the Superannuation Guarantee will save the budget $17 billion this year, rising to $100 billion, (in current dollars) by 2058. The new report, commissioned by Industry Super Australia, assesses various policy scenarios using...
Alecta, a Swedish pension fund with about $110 billion under management, wants to take active investing to a new level to force the companies it owns to be more ethical. Carina Silberg, who runs a newly merged corporate governance and sustainability unit at Alecta, says her team is bringing in reams of data to figure out exactly what portfolio companies are doing when it comes to environmental, social and governance standards. If “large gaps” are identified, “targeted action” follows, she...
It is no secret that many multiemployer pension plans are struggling – paying out substantially more in benefits to retirees than the income they are receiving. Without legislative action, many are expected to go bankrupt in the next 5 to 15 years, leaving current retirees and active employees without the retirement income they expected. To understand where we go from here, let’s first explore the history of multiemployer plans, then look at potential avenues for reform. How...
A global retirement survey conducted in 15 countries by Aegon has revealed that workers in Britain could be exposed to lifestyle-changing financial risk later in life as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the survey, workers in the UK are less likely to want to retire earlier than planned but almost a third of them have no back-up plan in case they are unable to do so due to ill health. Only about 30% have a...
The Spanish Government is looking at providing incentives for those who carry on working after the age of 65 while taking steps to stop high earners from taking early retirement. Read also Greece.Pay as you go for auxiliary pensions In his appearance on Wednesday before the Toledo Pact parliamentary commission, Inclusion and Social Security minister Jose Luis Escriva said his department’s intention is to encourage people to delay their retirement. through a redesign of the extra payments for those who...
South Africa is facing a ‘pensions train smash’, says Magnus Heystek, director of Brenthurst Wealth Management, as a number of factors including the poor JSE, a weak economy and new regulations are set to collide. Heystek said in a webinar on Wednesday (9 September), that this collision course is the result of a number of problems in the wider pensions industry which have been building for years. He added that ordinary South Africans are starting to see the problems...
The Massachusetts state pension fund is teaming up with the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative to try to improve the data available to investors who want to make decisions based on things like the way a company treats its workers, its carbon emissions or its product safety record. As socially responsible investing expands rapidly across the globe, the Aggregate Confusion Project with the Pension Reserves Investment Management Board aims to cut through the noise around Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)...
An industry think tank has said that replacing the pensions triple lock with “earnings smoothing mechanism” could save up to £15bn ($19.56bn, €16.59bn) from the covid-19 bill. But the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) added that this would reduce average state pension income by 2% from 2021. The triple lock means the state pension increases by the highest of the increase in average earnings, inflation or 2.5%. This comes as rumours continue over the future of the pensions triple-lock, with chancellor...
COVID-19 has disrupted life as we knew it, upending our daily lives, threatening the health of many, and exacerbating the financial stress already facing many families. The short-term impacts have been substantial and have received considerable attention, but we should not lose sight of the potential for long-term financial consequences, especially on retirement security. Read also US. DOL´S mixed message for plan sponsors Short-term relief, long-term consequences As millions of Americans found themselves out of work and many small businesses...
