September 2019

Individuals shouldn’t have to bear burden of a secure retirement

The near-retirees interviewed in Robert Weisman’s “With market swings, no rest for retirees” (Page A1, Sept. 4) are understandably nervous about their financial future. If the market wobbles, their retirement could rapidly become much less comfortable than they hope. The article didn’t mention that the insecurity these relatively comfortable retirees are facing is part of a longer and larger story of growing financial instability and insecurity for families in the United States. During the past 40 years, the risks...

July 2019

UK: PLSA Launches ESG And Stewardship Guidance

The PLSA published a new guide to help pension funds comply with the new ESG requirements coming into force from 1 October 2019, and support them in achieving good practice into the future. The new ESG requirements stem from a new regulation that was initially proposed by the Department for Work and Pensions in September 2018. The regulations implement the Law Commission's proposals to clarify pension scheme trustees' fiduciary duties in statute and will require pension schemes to have...

May 2019

US. The Coming Pension Crisis Is So Big That It’s A Problem For Everyone

By John Mauldin (President of Mauldin Economics) A decade ago I pointed out that public pension funds were $2 trillion underfunded and getting worse. More than one person told me that couldn’t be right.They were correct: It was actually much worse. It has gotten to $2 trillion and much worse in just a few years.Note that we are talking here about a specific kind of pension: defined benefit plans. They are usually sponsored by state and local governments, labor unions, and...

How the FCA is saving UK fintech industry from Brexit fallout

By Ian McKenna The regulator’s latest Business Plan emphasises a commitment to supporting innovation Few things drive the adoption of technology more than regulation; there has always been a symbiotic relationship between the two. I can’t remember a document in the past few years that has better demonstrated this than the FCA 2019/20 Business Plan published a couple of weeks ago. The document should be essential reading for anyone involved in industry technology. It presents an almost endless list...

April 2019

Opinion. Poland’s latest pension reform is good for the government, bad for savers

Recently announced reforms to Poland’s pension system are just the latest in a long line of changes made over the past eight years. Unfortunately, the majority of these have been motivated by short-term goals (either fiscal or political), without looking at the long-term stability of the pension system. Sadly, the current changes follow the same pattern. After lowering the retirement age to 65 (for men) and 60 (for women) and announcing discretionary one-off payments for pensioners before this year’s...

March 2019

The phony retirement crisis

By Andrew Biggs Contrary to the alarms, household savings are growing. But government plans are underfunded. Lawmakers are taking action to deal with the “retirement crisis.” More than 200 House Democrats are sponsoring a bill to expand Social Security benefits, funded by a dramatic increase in taxes. California, Connecticut, Illinois and Oregon have established state-run retirement plans for private sector-workers, which many progressives hope will supplant 401(k)s. But there is no retirement crisis among either today’s retirees or tomorrow’s. Eight in 10...

December 2018

Historical and Social Reasons Why Sacrifice As a Plan Fails

There were some emails about my article about being able to feed 40 billion people with today’s agricultural productivity. Food, energy, water, and ecosystems are connected. The complexity of those systems is secondary.Why do people have large families? What is happening within countries that go from poor and breeding to wealthy and stabilized? Very big events in history show the uselessness of some of the arguments that are made about the topic of overpopulation. Family Size, Public Health and...

How millennials should think about retirement saving

For millennials, retirement may be more of a challenge than for prior generations. They are almost certain to live longer than their parents, so their money will have to last longer and clear more hurdles along the way. For starters, no one really knows what Social Security is going to look like in 30 or 40 years. No matter how Congress adjusts the system over the next decade, younger workers shouldn’t count on receiving the same benefits as their parents. “I...

August 2018

Annuity Puzzle: how products are designed matters

By Eduardo Rodríguez Montemayor PPI’s Editorial Board editorial@pensionpolicy.net Getting an annuity with our savings pot at the time of retirement is the only contract that guarantees periodic pension payments for life. Yet, few people do it when offered to option to do so. What explains this puzzle? An annuity is a financial contract that pays out a periodic amount for as long as the annuitant is alive, in exchange for an initial premium. Defined-contribution (DC) pension schemes usually make it voluntary to choose whether to buy an...

May 2018

Save for our pensions? We millennials can barely find the money to live

I’m yet to see a zombie movie that portrays the most likely way that a post-apocalyptic world will play out: hungry pensioners roaming around; not yet dead, but no pension to keep them fed, looking for an arm to gnaw on. If you think I’m being disrespectful to elderly people, I’m not: that’s my future I’m talking about. Wednesday’s Royal London report, suggesting millennials need to save £260,000 for a pension, is exactly the sort of thing that could...