August 2018

16Aug

UK. Victims of pension scammers lost an average £91,000: UK regulators

Pension scam victims lost £91,000 each on average last year, according to new figures from the City watchdog and the pensions regulator. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and The Pensions Regulator (TPR) have teamed up to launch the ScamSmart advertising campaign, which is aimed at pension holders aged between 45 and 65 as they are most at risk of losing their cash. According to the regulators, highly sophisticated scammers lure people into transferring their pensions into fraudulent schemes. Victims of pension...

August 16, 2018
News, Slider,
Read more...
15Aug

EBA calls for second-level pension scheme in Ukraine

The European Business Association (EBA) has called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to place pressure on Ukraine to introduce a second-level pension scheme. “It is important to make effective and qualitative steps that will reduce the deficit in the pension system,” said the EBA in a statement. “In Ukraine, there are about 12 million people of retirement age and the pension deficit is more than 200 billion hryvnia (6.3 billion euros). Given the steady growth...

August 15, 2018
News, Slider,
Read more...
15Aug

South Africa. World Bank: Contributory pension fund could help SA’s poor

A contributory pension system, subsidised for poor South Africans, will impact both poverty and inequality, Parliament has heard - driving "forced savings" and helping people build assets that can be invested. Speaking to Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance (SCOF) on Tuesday, Marek Hanusch, a senior economist for the World Bank's global practice for macroeconomics, shared the organisation's proposed model to address poverty and inequality. The model is based on research in the World Bank's book An incomplete transition: Overcoming the...

August 15, 2018
News, Slider,
Read more...
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
News, Slider,
Read more...
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
News, Slider,
Read more...
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
News, Slider,
Read more...
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
News, Slider
Read more...
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
News, Slider,
Read more...
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
News, Slider, , ,
Read more...
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
News, Slider, , ,
Read more...