July 2019

19Jul

Brazil’s Lower House Delays Pension Reform Vote, Irking Investors

Brazil’s lower house has delayed its second vote on pension reform, and the Senate is already dragging out its first of two votes, creating investor woes as the stock market dipped. Things were looking good last week as the Chamber of Deputies approved the overhaul in its first of two voting rounds with expectations that lawmakers would conclude their task before the house broke for its July 18-31 recess. But too many deputies took vacation early, so the lawmakers...

July 19, 2019
News, Slider,
Read more...
19Jul

Risk-aversion among pension schemes a recipe for poverty

It is a known fact that pension funds, in their quest to deliver returns that will maintain pre-retirement standard of living for retirees, are faced with trilemma in their asset allocation—namely profitability, liquidity and security. Profitability is all about investing to achieve highest returns, liquidity rotates around the ability to answer to liabilities as at and when they fall due and security entails capital preservation. In other words, it is a risk-reward balancing act. However, there is also a...

July 19, 2019
News, Slider,
Read more...
19Jul

Africa. Why Rotich locked up Sh385bn pension cash for workers below 50 years

The Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) has come out to defend a legal amendment that will see more than Sh385 billion of workers’ pension savings made inaccessible to those below 50 years. Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich has, through a legal notice, amended pension rules effectively cutting out workers’ access to their employers’ portion of savings before clocking the official retirement age of 50. “Regulation 19 of the Principal Regulations is amended in paragraph (5) by deleting the words “and fifty...

July 19, 2019
News, Slider,
Read more...
18Jul

You’d Be Better Off Just Blowing Your Money: Why Retirement Planning Is Doomed

I know this is a bold, and possibly controversial title, but retirement planning is broken and leaving people broke.   The destructive narrative is, “work hard, save money in a retirement plan, wait and it will all work out in the long run.” The reality is, without the ingredients of responsibility and accountability, there is no easy solution for retirement. Meaning, if we just work hard and set money aside, we are putting money into a market we have no control over.  The...

July 18, 2019
News, Slider
Read more...
18Jul

South Africa. Threat to SA’s R4 trillion retirement savings pot highlighted

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) says in a statement it will be delivering a memorandum to the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (ASISA) in Rosebank. The memorandum will highlight the “real threat to South Africa’s R4 trillion retirement savings pot”. “The governing African National Congress (ANC) has for some time discussed the possibility that the savings of ordinary South Africans could be prescribed – invested in areas or sectors ‘prescribed’ by the government. As recently as last month, minister...

July 18, 2019
News, Slider,
Read more...
18Jul

U.S. Some Good News On Multiemployer Pensions

How, you ask, can there possibly be good news on multiemployer pensions? The updated 2019 PBGC projections aren't out yet but there's no reason to believe the numbers are any better than last year's "insolvency in 2025" multi-employer PBGC fund projections; likewise, the government's form 5500 data, the source for publicly-available information on plan funded status, only has updated data for a handful of plans. The House is getting closer to voting on the same bill that failed last year, the Butch Lewis Act,...

July 18, 2019
News, Slider
Read more...
18Jul

Pension cuts likely as low interest rates hit biggest Dutch funds

The company pensions of some eight million people may be cut next year because the four biggest pension funds do not have the legally required volume of assets. The giant civil service fund ABP, which is one of the biggest in the world, the healthcare fund Zorg & Welzijn, and engineering funds PMT and PME are all in the danger zone, due to the current very low interest rates. All four funds have booked a return on investment...

July 18, 2019
News, Slider
Read more...
17Jul

Europe. Welfare Ministry requests EUR 54 million for welfare priorities in Latvia

Among the ministry’s priorities are different initiatives, including the increase of minimal pensions, improvement of the pension indexation mechanism, state support for the poor who have disabled children, and others. This will require EUR 27.5 million, for which the minister is prepared to fight. According to the minister, there are many different needs, including Latvia’s Castle of Light and the expensive bridge. There is also the need for an acoustic concert hall in Riga. Nevertheless, Petraviča believes a situation...

July 17, 2019
News, Slider,
Read more...
17Jul

Africa. Treasury calls for pensions funding of infrastructure

The Treasury has joined a growing chorus for pension schemes to pool funds for big-ticket infrastructure projects to ease overreliance on expensive debt. Mr Stanley Kamau, the acting director-general for Public Investments and Portfolio Management at the Treasury, said the Sh1 trillion pension industry can help plug part of the country’s infrastructure finance gap. Kenya’s deficit in projects such as roads, power plants and lines, bridges, water and houses is conservatively estimated at more than Sh400 billion a year....

July 17, 2019
News, Slider,
Read more...
17Jul

Japan’s Answer to Its Pension Problems: Invest Like the U.S.

An official report advising Japanese couples to have at least $185,000 of their own savings for retirement has shaken up an election race and triggered a wave of interest in investing in a country where retirees have long counted chiefly on state pensions. On a recent weekend, a seminar on money management was packed with investment beginners. Mitsugu Kanda, a 28-year-old printing-company salesman, said he was thinking of putting money into stocks to help him accumulate the suggested amount....

July 17, 2019
News, Slider,
Read more...