March 2018

27Mar

Australia. Labor to exclude all pensioners from $59 billion dividends policy

Labor has buckled to pressure in the political row over its $59 billion revenue grab on dividend payments, staging a sudden retreat to exempt all Australians on the age pension from a policy it unveiled just two weeks ago. Bill Shorten will vow to exclude 306,000 pensioners from his original plan in a bid to calm the storm over the impact on retirees who stand to lose tax refunds worth thousands of dollars a year. The dramatic backdown comes after sharp...

March 27, 2018
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27Mar

Pension pains: The 5 hurdles facing LatAm AFPs

Not all Latin America's pension woes can be blamed on the AFP system, but there are key issues that are at the heart of the attacks from the public and politicians. US think tank Brookings Institute examined the big challenges facing pensions in the region on the 25th anniversary of the sweeping reforms that led to the birth of AFPs, a system first created in Chile in the 1980s. The report highlighted the unsustainability of defined benefit public pensions, as shown...

March 27, 2018
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26Mar

US. Revamped hybrid retirement plan proposed for rank-and-file state workers

Revamping the pension plans for future rank-and-file state workers will better serve the needs of younger employees and lower the state’s debt risk, according to officials with the Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System. The Senate Retirement Committee, chaired by Sen. Barrow Peacock, R-Bossier City, is expected to consider Senate Bill 14 on Monday. The legislation, authored by Peacock, is a hybrid retirement plan that would apply to rank-and-file state employees hired on or after Jan. 1, 2020. The monthly pension...

March 26, 2018
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26Mar

US. Battered by Great Recession, underfunded public pensions to persist

Ten years on from the financial crisis, many U.S. state and local public pension systems are still the worse for wear. Investment returns have been uneven and funding levels have yet to recover. Many pension funds have meanwhile attempted to boost returns by loading up on alternative investments to levels unheard of a decade earlier. “Some just cannot grow their way out of it. We have had several years of stellar (stock market) returns and it barely improved the underfunding situation,”...

March 26, 2018
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26Mar

UK pensions gender gap widens in past decade, figures show

The gender gap in UK retirement incomes has widened dramatically over the last decade, with the average single woman now £85 a week behind her male counterpart, according to new data. The findings come as companies and organisations continue to report the difference between what they pay male and female staff ahead of the 4 April deadline set by the government, and suggest that gender pay inequalities do not stop after people retire. Steve Webb, the former Lib Dem pensions minister,...

March 26, 2018
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23Mar

Australia. Pension pay rise kicks in but deeming rates disappoint retirees

PENSIONERS have received a pay rise this month, pushing their fortnightly rate above $900 for the first time. However, deeming rates are again unmoved, annoying hundreds of thousands of retirees who Centrelink judges to be earning more income than they actually are. Deeming — the threshold used by the pension income test when measuring financial assets such as cash or shares — is still at 1.75 per cent for the first $52,000 of a single pensioner’s assets and 3.25 per cent...

March 23, 2018
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23Mar

The ECB recommends delaying the retirement age in the euro area

The European Central Bank recommends delaying retirement age in eurozone to cope with ageing of population resulting from a low fertility rate, increased life expectancy and baby boom retirement. In Spain, this will increase progressively to reach 67 years in 2027. The ECB stresses that many pension reforms have been approved, more intense especially in countries that have undergone adjustment programs like Spain, he says. But in his latest economic bulletin he points out that more is needed. "These recent...

March 23, 2018
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22Mar

US. Investment trusts gobble assets; retirement plans retreat from active funds

US retirement plans pumped billions of dollars into investment trusts last year, helping asset managers offset some of the heavy cash outflows from their pricier actively managed funds. Assets in collective investment trusts, or CITs, run by T. Rowe Price Group Inc soared 54 percent last year to $88.9 billion. And assets in 16 CITs managed by Fidelity Investments rose 31 percent to $85.6 billion, according to a Reuters analysis of US Department of Labor reports. Read More: Reuters

March 22, 2018
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22Mar

India. Aadhaar obstacle depriving widows of pensions in Uttar Pradesh

Aadhaar, the Indian government’s bid to create the world’s biggest biometric database, has become a victim of “mission creep.” What began as a project to create a foolproof identification system to weed out duplicate and fake beneficiaries from public-welfare programs has morphed into a vast bureaucratic net that threatens to ensnare every citizen, rich or poor. In the process, its original purpose seems all but forgotten. In the rush to make Aadhaar mandatory for everything from opening a bank account...

March 22, 2018
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22Mar

Mexico to probe pension fund’s losing investment in indebted builder

Mexican federal auditors are investigating an investment made by the country’s state workers’ pension fund, after Reuters reported it spent millions of dollars on shares in a company spiraling toward bankruptcy. PensionIssste plowed more than $20 million into construction company ICA (ICA.MX) and became the largest shareholder just before ICA suspended debt payments, Reuters reported this month. The fund is set to lose most of its investment in a restructuring. The story sparked outrage in a country where corruption has become...

March 22, 2018
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