September 2023

2023 Retirement Plan Landscape Report

By MorningStar  Millions of Americans rely on the U.S. retirement system to save and invest for their futures. Similarly, the system depends on new employers offering retirement plans to replace plan closures. Expanding access to employer-sponsored retirement plans is essential to ensuring Americans are saving enough for the future, but it’s also necessary for the current system to address its weakness. In the second iteration of our annual report, we take a comprehensive look at the overall health of the...

Exploring the Impact of Information Environment on ESG Disclosure Behavior: Evidence from National Pensions and Foreign Investors

By Jong Won Choi, Suk Hyun & Ju Hyoung Park  This study examines the impact of institutional investors on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures of Korean companies listed on Bloomberg from 2011 to 2020. We find that while institutional investors encourage general ESG disclosure, they do not influence materiality-based ESG disclosure. Interestingly, materiality-based ESG disclosures decrease when institutional investors are major shareholders, suggesting a potential decline in disclosure quality. The study also finds a positive relationship between materiality-based...

August 2023

Longevity Risk and Capital Markets: The 2021-22 Update

By David P. Blake, Malene Kallestrup Lamb & Jesper Rangvid  This Special Issue of the Journal of Demographic Economics contains 10 contributions to the academic literature all dealing with longevity risk and capital markets. Draft versions of the papers were presented at Longevity 16: The Sixteenth International Longevity Risk and Capital Markets Solutions Conference that was held in Helsingør near Copenhagen on 13-14 August 2021. It was hosted by PerCent at Copenhagen Business School and the Pensions Institute at City,...

Unbundling Climate Change Risk from ESG

By Jeffrey N. Gordon  The divergence between the United States and the European Union over ESG disclosure and compliance policy for asset managers and companies is a striking feature of the corporate governance landscape. This divergence derives at least in part from differences in core features of the relevant political economy. In particular, retirement security in the US is significantly tied to stock market values; this is not so in Europe. The US is a petro-state, the world’s largest producer...

July 2023

U.S. Public Pensions Are Building for The Long-Term. How Pension Plans Are Reacting After A Year Of Shocks.

By Ortec Finance U.S. public sector pension plans are planning ahead for the potential impact of further economic and market shocks, a new report from Ortec Finance, the leading global provider of risk and return management solutions for pension funds and other institutions, shows. Its report based on a study* of U.S. public sector pension plan managers at U.S. public sector pension plans who collectively help manage over $1.315 trillion, found 90% plan to increase spending on scenario modeling and stress...

June 2023

U.S public pensions are building for the long-term. How pension plans are reacting after a year of shocks

By Ortec Finance U.S. public pension plans have been through a torrid year of investment volatility, rising inflation and increasing interest rates. The Federal Reserve has raised rates nine times in succession taking the rate to 5% - the highest since 2007 – while CPI inflation climbed as high as 9.1% in June 2022. The most recent figure of 4.9% for April is good news but many analysts still expect further Federal Reserve rate rises. The series of economic shocks helps explain...

May 2023

But What If a Pension Fund is Overfunded?

By James Tatum Currently, the consensus is that if a pension fund is less than 100 percent funded, it is underfunded.1 In other words, if the pension fund does not presently have all the assets needed to pay liabilities in the future (and without consideration of future contributions to the pension fund), the pension fund and retiree benefits are theoretically imperiled. So, out of concern for “underfunded” pension funds, of which there are many, there have been innumerable research papers,...

April 2023

Management of Retirement Funds by Republican vs. Democrat States: Understanding the Differences

By Mustafa O. Caglayan, Edward R. Lawrence & Robinson Reyes-Peña As most of the state pensions in the USA deal with their respective funding crisis, we compare the management approaches undertaken by funds located in the states that are governed by Republicans vis-à-vis funds that are located in states governed by Democrats. We find that pension funds located in states governed by Republicans display a lower funding ratio compared to the pension funds located in states governed by Democrats. The...

PensionBee. Annual Report and Financial Statements 2022

By PensionBee PensionBee is a leading online pension provider in the UK, with a mission to make pensions simple, so that everyone can look forward to a happy retirement. We are a direct-to-consumer financial technology company with approximately 183,000 Invested Customers and £3.0bn of Assets under Administration (‘AUA’) as at 31 December 2022 (2021: 117,000 Invested Customers and  £2.6bn of AUA). We deliver a leading customer proposition to pension holders in the UK defined contribution pensions market, catering for the mass...

March 2023

Sustainable Investment: Best Practice Disclosure Checklist for Pension Funds

By World Bank Group There are compelling reasons for asset owners – in particular large pension funds and sovereign wealth funds – to adopt sustainable investment, and for governments to support them in these endeavours. First, asset owners have a key role to play in providing the capital that supports national economic and development goals. Second, sustainability issues – for example, climate change, labour rights, public health – are important drivers of investment value. Third, asset owners play a key...