May 2021
18May

Aon to sell pension, investment consulting units in Germany to LCP

Aon agreed to sell its pension consulting, pension administration and investment consulting businesses in Germany to consultant Lane Clark & Peacock as the firm seeks to secure clearance from the European Commission for its merger with Willis Towers Watson. In a news release Monday, Aon said the deal with LCP "resolves questions raised by the European Commission with respect to the markets in which these businesses are active." The commission has been investigating competition issues related to the Aon-WTW merger...

May 18, 2021
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18May

UK pension fund USS buys half of 4-GW solar platform in Spain

UK private pension fund, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), has made a deal to acquire a 50% stake in Spain-based renewables platform Bruc Energy, it was announced on Monday. Bruc Energy operates as an investment vehicle of Spanish fund manager Bruc Management and is focused on solar photovoltaic (PV) assets in Spain and Portugal. The vehicle is co-owned by Canadian pension fund OPTrust and Juan Bejar, Spanish businessman and chairman of Bruc Management. USS has invested EUR 225 million (USD 273m)...

May 18, 2021
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11May

German utility giant Eon starts €2.5bn pension fund

German utility giant Eon has created a new pension fund structure that will cover 10,000 members and have €2.5bn (£2.15bn) in assets under management. Eon acquired German energy company Innogy from RWE in 2019. Innogy’s pension assets from RWE Pensionsfonds were transferred to Willis Towers Watson’s Pensionsfonds in December that same year as an interim solution. Eon will use the pension expertise of Willis Towers Watson for both implementation and the ongoing operations of the new pension structure. Stefan Brenk, head of...

May 11, 2021
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06May

Germany hatches plan to attract green investment capital

The German government is planning a new green financing strategy to steer capital towards environmental projects and developing Germany into a leading hub for sustainable finance, plans seen by Reuters show. The so-called Sustainable Finance Strategy plan lists 26 individual measures and is due to be adopted by the cabinet on Wednesday with a view to mobilising investment for climate protection projects. "The federal government wants to develop Germany into a leading location for sustainable finance," states the plan, which is...

May 6, 2021
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April 2021
01Apr

Reference Points for Retirement Behavior: Evidence from German Pension Discontinuities

By Arthur Seibold This paper documents and analyzes an important and puzzling stylized fact about retirement behavior: the large concentration of job exits at specific ages. In Germany, almost 30% of workers retire precisely in the month when they reach one of three statutory retirement ages, although there is often no incentive or even a disincentive to retire at these thresholds. To study what can explain the concentration of retirements around statutory ages, I use novel administrative data covering the...

April 1, 2021
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February 2021
25Feb

Germany. Vantik and Mastercard simplify saving for retirement with new debit card

Financial security in retirement is one of the most urgent issues in Germany and Europe. In order to offer people a simple access to savings for retirement, the Berlin-based Fintech Vantik announces a partnership with Mastercard and the banking-as-a-service-platform Vodeno. The heart of the cooperation is the combination of a free debit Mastercard with long-term savings: users of the Vantikcard receive 1% cashback on every purchase, which are automatically invested into a sustainable pension fund. Saving for retirement is thus...

February 25, 2021
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December 2020

23Dec

Financial Incentives and Heterogeneity in Retirement Behavior An Empirical Analysis Based on SHARE-RV Data

By Nicolas Goll, Felizia Hanemann Over the past few decades, different reforms have come into force, which aim at keeping older workers in the labor market longer. Broad literature to date has investigated reform effects for the average worker. Evidence on the heterogeneous reform effects on different groups is to date however relatively sparse. We therefore evaluate the 1992 pension reform in Germany, which gradually introduced actuarial deductions for early retirement between 1997 and 2004. We investigate whether individuals...

December 23, 2020
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01Dec

German pension savings register growth

Evidence suggests that Germans have taken retirement saving more seriously in the last three years, with the amount of funds set aside for retirement growing as a percentage of total funds. The BVI, Germany’s trade body for fund managers, said the percentage of funds managed by its members for pension provision had grown from 40% three years ago to almost half of the total funds managed now. Funds managed by BVI members for retirement equalled €1,600 billion in the trade...

December 1, 2020
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November 2020

12Nov

German pension system requires tweaks to stand future challenges

The German retirement system will have to continue to adapt to new circumstances through a series of changes to sharpen its private and occupational pensionsprovision, according to panellists speaking at the virtual Handelsblatt annual conference on occupational pensions this week. Measures should be adopted to make savings products “more profitable than today”, if the aim is to rely on private pension provisions, said Dorothea Mohn, head of the financial market team at the organization for the protection of consumers...

November 12, 2020
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October 2020

23Oct

The Changing Nature of Work and Public Pension Coverage: Evidence from the US and Europe

By Axel H. Börsch-Supan, Courtney Coile, Jonathan Cribb, Carl Emmerson, Yuri Pettinicchi We examine non-standard work and its impact on pension coverage via a case study of the US, the UK, and Germany. We find that the share of workers engaged in non-standard work has changed only modestly over time in these three countries, despite the popular perception that a more significant transformation in the nature of work may be underway. We discuss how non-standard work may affect public...

October 23, 2020
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