February 2024

Home Equity and Retirement Funding: Challenges and Opportunities

By Vishaal Baulkaran & Pawan Jain We investigate the use of home equity to address the retirement saving crisis and funding shortfall. Using survey data from consumers and financial planners, we examine Canadian consumers’ views on equity release and gauge financial planners’ knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives toward recommending equity release products to their clients. Our findings indicate that a primary barrier for consumers is their lack of understanding about home equity release schemes. However, when these schemes are more cost-effective...

Climate Polarization and Green Investment

By Anders Anderson & David T. Robinson We build a nationally representative sample of retirement savers in Sweden to study how asymmetric updating of beliefs about climate change affects investment decisions. After the intense heat wave of 2018, respondents in regions dominated by a right-wing, anti-climate party grow less concerned about climate change, while respondents outside these regions grow more concerned. Those growing more concerned rebalance their retirement portfolios toward climate-friendly mutual funds; those growing less concerned rebalance out of...

Gender Inequality Over the Life Cycle, Information Provision and Policy Preferences

By Alessandra Casarico, Jana Schuetz & Silke Uebelmesser We conduct a survey experiment with four thousand German respondents and provide information on two measures of gender inequality, separately or jointly: the gender gap in earnings and the gender gap in pensions. We analyze the effect of information provision on respondents’ views on the importance of reducing gender inequality and on their agreement with the adoption of policies targeted at different stages of the life cycle and aimed at reducing the...

January 2024

Public Pension Funding Index January 2024

By Rebecca A. Sielman & Richard L. Gordon  Two consecutive months of positive market performance in November and December 2023 pushed the funded status of the 100 largest U.S. public pension plans to its highest point of 2023. The plans’ estimated funded status increased from 72.4% as of October 31, 2023, to 75.9% as of November 30, 2023, and further increased to 78.2% as of December 31, 2023, as measured by the Milliman 100 Public Pension Funding Index (PPFI). Get the...

Planning for a pension scheme buyout

By Katherine Russell, Melissa Wongand & Alice Fletcher The bulk annuity market has seen an increase in full scheme buy-ins, which is a significant milestone for any pension scheme. However, there are still lots to do before the buy-in is converted to a buyout and the pension scheme can be wound up. Katherine Russell, Melissa Wong and Alice Fletcher highlight the key steps and considerations following a full scheme buy-in. Get the report here

Asset Manager, Pension Fund & ESG

By René Maatman & Kleis Broekhuizen  When it comes to sustainability, much is expected of pension funds. Of course, they must ensure value-proof pensions. They are also expected to contribute to the environment, climate, human rights, social justice, and corporate governance. ESG must be factored into investment policy. But how and to what extent? There are varying preferences within the population of pension participants. Politicians, action groups and NGOs have their own beliefs. Pension fund boards must make complex trade-offs. How...

Sustainable Finance and ESG: From Policy Concerns to Transformative Tools

By Peer C. Zumbansen  This article provides an in-depth summary of the inaugural Fall conference on ESG and Sustainable Finance at McGill University, November 2023. The conference was hosted by the SGI CIBC Office for Sustainable Finance (OSF) and the Business Law Platform at McGill’s Faculty of Law. OSF was established under the auspices of McGill’s Sustainable Growth Initiative, a cross-departmental research and collaboration platform committed to cutting-edge scholarship and training on sustainable finance, decarbonisation, green mobility, climate change and...

Collective Defined Contribution Pension with Stochastic Age-structured Models

By Fan Zhang We have reconfigured the Age-structured Model(ASM) model, leveraging its mathematical underpinnings rooted in cohort dynamics. This paper applies the novel ASM framework to the issue of Collective Defined Contribution Pension(CDC) pensions, providing a profound characterization of population dynamics and asset fluctuations at each time-age point within the pension context. This serves to substantiate the novel ASM framework as the key mathematical model for addressing CDC-related challenges. Furthermore, we have illustrated the distinct advantages of ASM through this...

Reforma Pensionaria

Por Enrique Díaz-Infante Chapa La reforma de 1995 creo el Sistema de Ahorro para el Retiro (SAR). Fue muy positiva en cuanto a que, a través de las Afores, dio propiedad y transparencia a los trabajadores sobre su jubilación. También en cuanto a que hizo financieramente viable un sistema pensionario que fiscalmente era insostenible y generó ahorro necesario para invertir en muchos proyectos de infraestructura, con impacto favorable en crecimiento y desarrollo del país. Fuente Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias

PPF 7800 Index

By Pension Protection Fund The PPF 7800 Index tracks the level of underfunding risk in the PPF-eligible universe using the latest scheme return information provided to The Pensions Regulator and the roll- forward methodology used for PPF levy purposes. There are certain simplifications within the levy calculation, as described in note 4 on page 7 of this document, that should be borne in mind when interpreting these results. In particular, the assets and liabilities have not been reduced for benefit...