November 2019

18Nov

Millions Of Kenyans Missing Out On Pension Schemes, Warns NSSF

About 15 million Kenyans who are eligible to make saving towards retirement benefits are not enrolled with any pension scheme, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has revealed. The Fund’s Managing Trustee Antony Omerikwa observed that most pension schemes registered by the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) focused on covering employees of state corporations, companies and individual owned organizations. Omerikwa stated that though the bulk of Kenyans were engaged in the informal sector, pension schemes in the country had done little to...

November 18, 2019
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October 2019

17Oct

UK. Breaking pension dashboard rules will carry £50k fine

Pension providers that fail to provide data for the pension dashboards could be fined up to £50,000 by The Pensions Regulator, according to the proposed legislation underpinning the project. Part of the Pension Schemes Bill is devoted to the creation of a framework to support the dashboard project, including new rules to compel pension schemes to provide accurate information to consumers. According to the 187-page document, published yesterday (October 16), the regulator will have powers to issue compliance notices and penalty notices to parties that don’t...

October 17, 2019
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16Oct

Kenya. Pensions uptake low as returns increase

The country’s pension penetration remains at a 15 per cent low despite returns growing at an average 10.7 per cent annually over the past six years. According to a report by Cytonn Asset Managers the retirement benefits assets under management in the pension funds industry grew eight per cent to Sh1.2 trillion as of December 2018. The report shows fund managers are still relying on traditional, low-risk assets such as government securities and equities which cumulatively accounted for 56.7...

October 16, 2019
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July 2019

29Jul

Extending Pension Coverage to the Informal Sector in Africa

By Melis Guven & Ernesto Brodersohn The coverage of pension systems in the Africa region is limited to the small segment of the population in the formal sector. Coverage is thin partly because traditional contributory pension schemes are not responding to the needs of the informal sector. As a result, a large share of the region’s adult population has no access to contributory pension schemes during their working lives. This means they will not be eligible for a pension....

July 29, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, Operation, Pension design, , , ,
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February 2019

23Feb

Pension Funds with Automatic Enrollment Schemes: Lessons for Emerging Economies

By Heinz P. Rudolph (The World Bank) Since the introduction of the KiwiSaver scheme in New Zealand in 2006, several countries have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, voluntary funded pension systems with automatic enrollment features. Since most of the literature has focused on countries with the common law tradition, including the United Kingdom and the United States, this note analyzes cases of countries with the civil code tradition, including Turkey, Poland, the Russian Federation, Chile, Brazil, and...

February 23, 2019
Articles, Pension design, System Sustainability, , , , , , , , ,
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03Feb

State Automatic Enrollment IRAs After the Trump Election: Are They Preempted by ERISA?

By Kathryn L. Moore (University of Kentucky College of Law) In recent years, a number of states have sought to close the retirement savings funding gap by enacting legislation mandating that employers that do not sponsor a voluntary pension plan for their employees automatically enroll their employees in a state-administered IRA program. This article focuses on the most serious legal challenge these programs face: ERISA preemption.  The article begins by providing an overview of the state automatic enrollment IRA programs....

February 3, 2019
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December 2018

16Dec

Informing Retirement Savings Decisions: A Field Experiment on Supplemental Plans

By Robert L. Clark (North Carolina State University - Poole College of Management), Robert G. Hammond (North Carolina State University), Melinda Sandler Morrill (North Carolina State University - Department of Economics), Christelle Khalaf (North Carolina State University) Although supplemental saving plans can be an important part of an individual's financial security in retirement, contribution rates remain low, particularly among those with lower salaries and less education. We report findings from an intervention that provided information on key aspects of the...

December 16, 2018
Articles, News, Pension design, Savings, Slider, Slider-Left, , , ,
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October 2018

22Oct

The Chinese Pension System

By Hanming Fang (University of Pennsylvania - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)) & Jin Feng (Fudan University - School of Economics) We provide a detailed overview of the current state of the Chinese pension system, as well as its development, its problems and some ideas for future reforms. (more…)

October 22, 2018
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June 2018

16Jun

Public Pensions: State and Local Government Contributions to Underfunded Plans

By United States General Accounting Office (GAO)  Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the status of public pension plan funding, focusing on the basic pension plans of state and local governments. GAO found that: (1) states and localities with underfunded pension plans run the risk of reducing future pension benefits to taxpayers or raising revenues; (2) unfunded liabilities for all state and local pension plans totalled $200 billion in 1992; (3) contributions to pension funds in 1992 fell short of...

June 16, 2018
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October 2017

08Oct

Occupational Pension Funds (IORPs) & Sustainability: What Does the Prudent Person Principle Say?

By Alexandra Horvathova, Rasmus Kristian Feldthusen & Vibe Ulfbeck (University of Copenhagen) The European Union encourages individuals to save in private and occupational pension funds to complement their state saving-plans. Throughout their lives, employers directly sponsor occupational retirement saving plans, so individual employees may top up their future pensions. While the European Union clearly supports the formation and cross-border participation in these financial vehicles by adopting regulatory framework, the EU has also decided to determine a common investment decision standard...

October 8, 2017
Aging, Articles, Pension design, Regulation, , ,
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