June 2019

12Jun

Vanguard study finds employers, employees improving retirement plan behaviors

The report noted that 48% of Vanguard plans at the end of 2018 featured automatic enrollment and 66% of new plan entrants were enrolled via automatic enrollment. This compares with 46% of plans that featured automatic enrollment last year, and just 20% of plans that offered it in 2008. Including employee and employer contributions, the average 15-year total participant contribution rate in 2018 was 10.6% and the median was 9.8%, the report found. Two-thirds of auto-enrollment plans have implemented...

June 12, 2019
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12Jun

Zimbabwe. Unclaimed pension funds reach $27m

About 50 000 pensioners have not received their pension payouts with unclaimed pension funds now amounting to more than ZWL$27 million, the industry regulator has said. Speaking during a meeting with funds trustees in Chinhoyi yesterday, Insurance and Pension Commission (Ipec) spokesperson, Lloyd Gumbo, said the regulator was worried about the substantial amount that is lying idle while the owners are probably wallowing in abject poverty. "The commission is concerned with the number of pensioners who do not know...

June 12, 2019
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11Jun

New York Comptroller Aims to Double Pension Plan’s ESG Funding

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli pledges to double the New York State Common Retirement Fund’s sustainable investments. That will bring the pension program’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG)investments to $20 billion over the next decade. To aid in that effort, he will next create a multi-asset climate solutions program, which will operate similarly to its emerging manager program. It will work with managers, consultants, and index providers on creating alignment with the fund’s sustainability goals. The fund intends to better assess its...

June 11, 2019
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11Jun

Japan. Release of data needed for debate on effectiveness of pension system

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and all his ministers attended a June 10 session of the Upper House Audit Committee. As the ruling coalition has refused to convene a Budget Committee meeting in either house, it marked the first time in two months that Abe responded to questions concerning national policy issues at the Diet. Opposition questions focused on a recently published controversial Financial Services Agency report that says a typical elderly Japanese couple needs an additional 20 million yen ($184,175) to...

June 11, 2019
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11Jun

UK. CMA produces new requirements on investment consultants and pension trustees

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has completed its changes to the investment consultancy and fiduciary management sectors with new rules covering the appointment of service providers by pension scheme trustees, and information provided to them. The CMA order (24 page / 230KB PDF) is the conclusion of an investigation into the supply and acquisition of investment consultancy services and fiduciary management services to and by institutional investors and employers in the UK. The investigation began in 2017 and...

June 11, 2019
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11Jun

Bank fraud in San Miguel de Allende: expats fight to regain US $40 million stolen through Ponzi scheme

In San Miguel de Allende, it is said foreigners live here either because they want to be forgotten, or because there’s no one left to remember them. This small-town alchemy of anonymity and forgettability laid the groundwork for an alleged decade-long Ponzi scheme estimated to have stolen US $40 million from more than 150 Banco Monex accounts belonging to United States, Canadian, British, European and Australian expatriates. While several local Mexicans were also embroiled in the bank fraud, the vast majority...

June 11, 2019
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10Jun

Japan. In historic first, G20 weighs aging as global risk

Ballooning healthcare costs, labor shortages and financial services for the elderly: for the first time Sunday, the world's top policymakers are tackling economic issues relating to aging and shrinking birthrates. G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs meeting in Japan -- where a rapidly aging population is a major domestic problem -- have been warned to address the issue before it is too late. "What we are saying is, 'If the issue of aging starts to show its impact...

June 10, 2019
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10Jun

UK. Doctors will leave NHS unless they see pension reforms, union warns

The Conservative Government must reform NHS pension taxation or risk an exodus of doctors and a major workforce crisis, the British Medical Association (BMA) has warned. The doctors’ union has requested an urgent meeting with Health Secretary Matt Hancock to see what can be done to stop experienced doctors leaving. Concerns about high-earning doctors’ pensions were raised in 2016 after the introduction of the “tapered annual allowance”. Under the scheme, for every £2 of income above £150,000 per year,...

June 10, 2019
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10Jun

Netherlands. What does the new pension agreement really mean?

Agreement on reforming the Dutch pension system has been 10 years in the making, and still needs fleshing out in detail – a process which is likely to take several more years at least. Social affairs minister Wouter Koolmees has said the plan for the transition to a new pensions system should be completed by the end of 2020 and that the cabinet aims to complete the legal framework for system reform by the start of 2022. However, there...

June 10, 2019
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07Jun

UK. Women fight pension age changes in court

Nearly four million women born in the 1950s have been affected by the raising of the state pension age from 60 to 66. Two claimants who are part of the Back To 60 campaign group have now taken the Department for Work and Pensions to the High Court in London, arguing that the change "unlawfully discriminated against them on the grounds of age, sex, and age and sex combined". They also claim that they were not given adequate notice....

June 7, 2019
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