January 2019

23Jan

South African state pension fund suspends officials over technology deal

South Africa’s state pension fund said on Tuesday that it had suspended two officials for flouting governance rules over an investment in local technology firm Ayo Technology Solutions. The PIC is the biggest investor in Africa’s most industrialised economy, holding a large volume of bonds issued by state-owned firms and equity stakes in some blue-chip companies. The suspensions come as a state inquiry into governance at the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which manages 2 trillion rand ($144 billion) in...

January 23, 2019
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23Jan

Canadian pension fund takes stake in Alliant

Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board is investing in Alliant Insurance Services Inc. and the U.S. brokerage’s majority shareholder Stone Point Capital LLC is upping its stake in the firm, Alliant announced Tuesday. Following the transaction, Greenwich, Connecticut-based Stone Point will remain Alliant’s largest institutional shareholder while the company’s management and producers will continue to own “the majority of the firm,” Newport Beach, California-based Alliant said in a statement. Stone Point became Alliant’s largest institutional shareholder in 2015. Alliant...

January 23, 2019
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22Jan

South Africa opens inquiry into improper use of government pension funds

A commission of inquiry into South Africa's Public Investment Corporation (PIC) has just opened. The inquiry has a remit to look into allegations of mismanagement and corruption going back to 2015. The PIC is Africa's biggest asset manager. The PIC manages the bulk of pensions of South African civil servants on behalf of the Government Employees’ Pension Fund. Its investments are worth two trillion rands, about 126 billion euros. The scale of its investment makes the PIC the largest...

January 22, 2019
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22Jan

Canada’s vast pension fund is sticking with China even as political tensions mount

Investment strategies involving China are coming under scrutiny amid political and security-related conflicts between Beijing and major Western economies, as well as a predicted growth slowdown for the world's second-largest economy. But Canada's massive pension fund, among the world's top 10 in terms of size, is sticking to plans to expand its holdings there. Mark Machin, president and chief executive of Canada's Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), sees the country's potential to diversify his portfolio as outweighing any shorter-term...

January 22, 2019
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22Jan

Ageing Hong Kong should aim to keep its elderly healthy and in a job, rather than eligible for welfare

With improved medical science and a rising standard of living, most countries have seen a steady increase in life expectancy. Someone born in Hong Kong today, for example, could expect to live about 12 years longer than their counterpart did in 1960 and will have much better access to welfare support as well as healthcare provisions. At present, 17 per cent of the population in Hong Kong is aged 65 or above, with more than 1.2 million people in...

January 22, 2019
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21Jan

Micro-pensions can boost security for India’s elderly poor

Only 4 per cent households were covered under widow pension, 2 per cent retirement pension and 1.5 per cent under disability pension. India is home to one-fifth of the world’s population which includes a third of the world’s poor and one-eighth of the world’s elderly. Most of them spend their whole lives as informal workers and have no retirement security other than the hope that their children will care for them in their old age. This arrangement worked well...

January 21, 2019
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21Jan

Protect your pension pots from investment scams and negligent trustees: UK government

The Insolvency Service is warning people to guard their pension savings from investment scammers and negligent trustees. Since 2015, the Insolvency Service has applied to the courts to wind-up 24 companies that have carried out a form of pension misuse. The pension misuse varies from convincing people to access their pensions and invest in unregulated schemes to pension trustees not carrying out their duties properly. The Insolvency Service has estimated that there have been close to 3,750 victims connected to...

January 21, 2019
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21Jan

US. NYC Mayor de Blasio Proposes City-Sponsored Retirement Plan

If the federal government can’t get it done and you live in a state is slow to adopt, maybe your city will step up (what’s next, neighborhoods?). New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently delivered his State of the City Address. Among the proliferation of payouts Hizzoner promised in city spending was his plan to provide “retirement security for all” in a city-sponsored retirement plan. “Fewer than half of all working New Yorkers have access to a plan...

January 21, 2019
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18Jan

UK. New pension should have multiple designs

Pension experts have urged the government to be flexible in its approach to creating a new risk-shared saving vehicle, to ensure that a wide range of members’ needs are covered. Responding to a consultation on collective defined contribution (CDC) schemes, which closed yesterday (January 16), consultants Aon and XPS, along with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA), put forward their views. All three stated establishing a retirement saving model that shared risk throughout a broad pool of...

January 18, 2019
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18Jan

Rethink Retirement

There’s a narrative out there, a conventional wisdom about the notion of retirement. It goes something like this: We work hard. We save all we can and we make wise investments. Then, one day we stop working and we become less of a factor in the world. We’re not needed anymore. Our best years are behind us. Karen Wagner and Erica Baird, founders of Lustre will tell you that the conventional wisdom is wrong. They describe their mission like...

January 18, 2019
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