February 2023
17Feb

The Future of Global Retirement 2023

By Smart As perceptions of retirement shift across the world, in line with emerging technology and reforms to legislation, the industry needs to keep up and remain one step ahead. At Smart, we’re continuing to lead the way in research and development in this space, and as part of our mission, we’ll continue to share some of the insights we gain around the needs of savers across the world. In 2021, we launched our first ‘Future of Global Retirement’ report, taking...

February 17, 2023
Books, Books, Pension design, , ,
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08Feb

Pension Withdrawals Drain Savings in Chile and Peru

By Richard Francis, Kelli Bissett-Tom & Christopher Dychala Peru, Chile and Bolivia have allowed early withdrawals from their funds as a source of relief for households and to support recoveries during the pandemic and the global price shock. But these have had negative financial and confidence ramifications, contributing to downgrades of Peru in 2021 and Chile in 2020. Longstanding private pension funds have been important supports for sovereign creditworthiness where they exist in Latin America. Pension fund assets have supported sovereign...

February 8, 2023
Books, Books, Regulation, Savings, , , , , ,
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08Feb

Early Pension Withdrawals in Chile During the Pandemic

By Olga Fuentes, Olivia S. Mitchell & Félix Villatoro Chile, with one of the largest and best funded defined contribution programs in Latin America, held over USD $200 bn in assets at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, or more than 80% of GDP. Reacting to populist pressures during the pandemic, however, the government gave non-retired participants three separate opportunities to tap into their retirement accounts, leaving some 4.2 million participants with zero retirement savings and draining around $50 bn...

February 8, 2023
Articles, Operation, Pension design, Savings, , , , ,
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01Feb

Financial literacy, longevity literacy, and retirement readiness

By Paul Yakoboski, Annamaria Lusardi & Andrea Hasler Six years of data from the TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index (P-Fin Index) clearly demonstrate that U.S. adults with greater financial literacy tend to have better financial well-being. This report shows that retirement readiness, a specific realm of financial well-being, likewise tends to be better among those with greater financial literacy. In addition, it shows that retirement readiness is also related to longevity literacy. While typically an overlooked factor, the importance of...

February 1, 2023
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January 2023
26Jan

Gender-Inclusive Financial and Demographic Literacy: Lessons from the Empirical Evidence

By: Giovanna Apicella, Enrico G. De Giorgi, Emilia Di Lorenzo & Marilena Sibillo Longevity crucially affects demand for pensions, insurance products and annuities. Consistent empirical evidence shows that women have historically experienced lower mortality rates than men. In this paper, we study a measure of the gender gap in mortality rates, we call “Gender Gap Ratio”, across a wide range of ages and for four countries: France, Italy, Sweden and USA. We show the stylized facts that characterize the trend...

January 26, 2023
Articles, Pension design, ,
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10Jan

Life expectancy in the U.S. has declined. What does that mean for your retirement?

Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its most recent U.S. life expectancy estimates, and sadly, the report found that, once again, Americans’ average number of years remaining have fallen. As reported recently, life expectancy at birth is now 76.4 years (as of 2021), down from 77 a year earlier. This is a drop of approximately 7 months over a one-year period, which takes life expectancy back almost a quarter-century to 1996. This decline is certainly...

January 10, 2023
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December 2022
02Dec

Are Retirement Planning Tools Substitutes or Complements to Financial Capability?

By Gopi Goda, Matthew Levy, Colleen Flaherty Manchester, Aaron Sojourner, Joshua Tasoff & Jiusi Xiao We conduct a randomized controlled trial to understand how a web-based retirement saving calculator affects workers' retirement-savings decisions. In both conditions, the calculator projects workers' retirement income goal. In the treatment condition, it also projects retirement income based on defined-contribution savings, prominently displays the gap between projected goal and actual retirement income, and allows users to interactively explore how alternative, future contribution choices would affect...

December 2, 2022
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November 2022
11Nov

Preparing for Retirement Reforms

By Karen E. Smith, Eugene Steurele, Damir Cosic Each of the three pillars of the US retirement system—Social Security, employer pensions, and private savings—suffers from serious problems that could threaten the financial security of future retirees. Social Security is at risk of becoming insolvent. If policymakers fail to act, Social Security benefits will be cut by about 25 percent starting in 2035, and even with reform, some combination of a slowdown in benefit growth for retirees and higher taxes on...

November 11, 2022
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11Nov

Cognitive Abilities, Self-Efficacy, and Financial Behavior

By Ning Tang This paper investigates the effect of cognitive abilities on financial behavior among older adults. Using the longitudinal dataset of the Health and Retirement Study, I find that cognitive abilities significantly affect financial behavior through two channels: ability and self-efficacy. People with higher cognition scores, who presumably are more capable of processing information and analyzing problems, achieve better financial outcomes. This positive association is especially strong in tasks having high demand of cognitive ability, which confirms the ability...

November 11, 2022
Aging, Articles, ,
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07Nov

UK. Renewed focus needed to address barriers to pension engagement

Brian Byrnes, head of personal finance at Moneybox, explores how financial advisers will be key in tackling the issue of pensions engagement. Ten years on from the launch of auto enrolment in the UK, it’s important we reflect on its success, with more people than ever before contributing to their retirement, who otherwise wouldn’t have done so. But as we look ahead, the question we’re now faced with is how can the industry improve upon the initial successes of auto...

November 7, 2022
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