August 2018

14Aug

Commonwealth Bank of Australia breached pension rules, inquiry hears

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) “breached a legislative provision” when it failed to transfer 15,000 pension customers to a low-cost product, an inquiry into financial sector conduct heard on Tuesday. Documents read at the Royal Commission showed the bank failed to comply with a law introduced in 2014 to provide low-cost retirement funds - dubbed superannuation funds - to some clients who did not choose a specific retirement savings product. Michael Hodge, the barrister assisting the commission, said that as such,...

August 14, 2018
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14Aug

Korea. Public against national pension changes

People are becoming more worried about life after retirement as the government is seeking to extend the mandatory national pension subscription period by five years to better finance the depleting pension fund. According to the National Pension Service (NPS), the pension fund is expected to bottom out by 2056 or 2057, three to four years earlier than the NPS predicted five years ago. So the government is contemplating extending the subscription period to the age of 65 from the current...

August 14, 2018
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14Aug

Irish retirees at risk of losing UK pension payments over Brexit

Pension payments being made to thousands of people in this country are threatened by Britain’s plans to pull out of the European Union, it has emerged. The issue is a huge risk to the pension payments of people who worked in the UK and get either a UK state pension, a British private pension or both. And it is likely to affect people who worked in Northern Ireland but live in the Republic and receive a sterling pension. Around 120,000 people here...

August 14, 2018
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13Aug

Collapsed UK retailer BHS pension scheme secured by $1 billion insurance buyout

The pensions of 9,000 employees of collapsed British department store chain BHS were secured on Sunday after a specialist insurer announced an insurance buyout of the firm’s ‘BHS2’ scheme covering 800 million pounds ($1 billion) of liabilities. Pension Insurance Corporation said the buyout left members of the scheme, which was set up in 2017 following BHS’s collapse and a cash injection by former owner Philip Green, fully insured and certain to receive benefits under the scheme. A pension insurance buyout involves...

August 13, 2018
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13Aug

UK pension funds could face legal action over climate risk, ClientEarth warns

ClientEarth has written to 14 of the UK's biggest pension funds warning they could face legal action unless they properly take account of risks to their investment portfolios posed by climate change. On Friday the green lawyer organisation wrote to the Shell Contributory Pension Fund, as well as the staff pension schemes of Tesco, Aviva, Lloyds Bank and HBOS, highlighting its "concern that a failure to think strategically about climate change may create risk for beneficiaries". "We are concerned that you,...

August 13, 2018
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10Aug

Australian inquiry hears top pension fund defend ad spend, NAB apology

Australia’s largest pension fund on Thursday defended using members’ money to bankroll a marketing campaign that depicted the country’s biggest banks as foxes aiming to take a larger share of the country’s A$2.6 trillion savings pool. AustralianSuper Chief Executive Ian Silk, the most senior financial sector executive to appear at the year-long Royal Commission inquiry, said the A$500,000 ($371,050) spent on a TV ad depicting a fox being let into a hen house by a man dressed in a suit,...

August 10, 2018
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10Aug

Why Innovation And Regulation Should Work Together

If there is one single matter that worries tech leaders today it is the difficulty in conciliating innovation and regulation. Most companies, from tech giants to startups, are still trying to adjust to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and yet more of the same is coming. The next step will be the adoption of the EU’s ePrivacy Regulation, which will be published toward the end of 2018 or early 2019. Recently, lawmakers signed the California Consumer Privacy Act...

August 10, 2018
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10Aug

US. How Automation Will Affect Unfunded Pension Liabilities

In 2016, Deloitte Consulting and Oxford University did a study of public employees in the United Kingdom and estimated that up to 16% (almost 1 million jobs) could be eliminated by automation in the next twelve years. I think this is a wild underestimation. In the U.S. military, we call it the tooth to tail ratio—how many people does it take in the rear (the “tail”), to keep the individual fighter locating, closing with, and destroying the enemy (the “tooth”)....

August 10, 2018
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10Aug

UK. Pensions dashboard to be debated in Parliament

“The dashboard really needs to happen if the government wants people to save enough for a decent retirement income. We can’t stop pensions being confusing and a turn off but we can make it easier to get all the information in one place and that would surely help. "The practical difficulties are not to be underestimated and occupational schemes are struggling to improve their own data quality. However, if the risks are to be transferred to individuals then we have...

August 10, 2018
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09Aug

US. Here’s What Happens To Your 401(k) When You Leave Your Job

Let’s face it: Nowadays, most workers don’t stay in the same job or work for the same company for the duration of their careers. But what happens if you funded a 401(k) and then switch jobs, leave your company or get laid off? What happens to the money you accumulated when you move on? The important thing to know is you get to decide what happens to it. Here are some of your options, assuming you are too young to...

August 9, 2018
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