March 2021

A Guide to the Treatment of Pensions on Divorce

By Pension Advisory Group The publication of this final report from the Pension Advisory Group is an important and very welcome event. The importance of the work is demonstrated by the fact that a good many busy and experienced practitioners have given up valuable time over the course of the past two years to produce this definitive guidance on the approach to the issue of pensions in Financial Remedy cases before the Family Court. For too long the division of...

The Welfare and Labor Market Effects of Mandatory Pension Savings: Evidence from the Israeli Case

By Adi Brender Many studies show that workers make poor decisions about pension savings. Policy responses to these failures include social security retirement arrangements, tax benefits for pension savings and, in some countries, also mandatory private savings towards retirement. This study examines the response of Israeli employees to the introduction of mandatory pension contributions, and the medium-term labor market effects of the arrangement, using a randomly selected panel of 300,000 employees. The first year of the arrangement, when enforcement was...

US. $35 Trillion in Retirement Savings Tells a Tale of Two Economies

New data published by the Investment Company Institute (ICI) shows total U.S. retirement assets grew to $34.9 trillion as of December 31, which is up 7.5% from the end of the third quarter of the year and up 9.3% overall for last year. With such strong growth for the year, the ICI reports, retirement assets accounted for a third of all household financial assets in the United States at the end of December. The ICI update shows that assets in...

Kenya: Former Telkom Workers Wallow in Poverty As Pension Scheme Holds On to Payout

On a bright Wednesday morning, Agnes Ouma sits on a blue plastic chair outside her neighbour's house, in Jamhuri estate on Ngong road. She is going through her phone book. Midway, she pauses and laments: "Nobody receives my calls these days." She thinks that most of her contacts have blacklisted her. Because whenever she calls, it is to ask for financial help. Since retrenchment, she says, she has been reduced to a borrower -- borrowing without any clear plan to repay. "No...

Towards Improved Retirement Savings Outcomes for Women

By OECD Labour market inequalities are well-known to be the main drivers of the gender pension gap. This publication focuses on helping governments find solutions for retirement savings arrangements that do not further exacerbate these inequalities. This study first analyses why the gender pension gap exists and sheds light on some of the behavioural and cultural factors that contribute to these inequalities. Country case studies assess how demographics, labour markets and other factors may affect gaps in pension coverage, assets...

Australia. Age Pension increase for mid March

This announcement follows the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety's Final Report, tabled into Parliament on 26 February 2021, which outlined the necessary changes needed in the aged care sector From 20 March, 2021, all social security payments will be increased, including the Carer Payment. The Age Pension was not raised last September, which the peak body for older people, National Seniors Australia, says was the first time there was no increase to cover the cost of living in the...

E.U. Pushes Companies to Close Gender Pay Gap

Pushing member states to address salary disparities between men and women, the European Union revealed details on Thursday of a proposed law that would require companies to divulge gender pay gaps and give job candidates access to salary information in employment interviews. It also would provide women with better tools to fight for equal pay. The move comes as female workers across the world have been disproportionately affected by the economic repercussions of the coronavirus crisis, and it could lead...

UK Budget: Sunak freezes lifetime allowance for pensions contributions

By Jenna Brown, Christopher Copper-Ind Britain's finance minister, Rishi Sunak, has frozen the lifetime allowance (LTA) for pension contributions at just over £1m for the remainder of this Parliament, and will be keeping IHT at the current level for a further five years. Read also UK. Women retirees win £2.7bn for underpaid pensions The Chancellor said the LTA would remain at its current level of £1,073,100 for 2020/21 rather than increasing in line with inflation. It had been expected to rise by...

Fraudsters prey on the fears of China’s aging population.

Shady retirement home and investment schemes have cheated China’s rapidly aging population out of hundreds of millions of dollars, spurring more than a thousand criminal cases in recent years. In a society that traditionally relied on family members to take care of elderly parents, fraudsters have been able to prey on fears that changing social norms and scarce resources will leave older people bereft, report Alexandra Stevenson and Cao Li for The New York Times. By 2025, more than 300 million...

South Africa. The battle for pension savings: Between secure retirement and survival

The retirement savings industry keenly follows Finance Minister Tito Mboweni's speech every year, if not for anything else, to advise savers how to maximise their tax benefits when tax rates and bracket adjustments are announced. The 2021 Budget speech, however, had a lot of game changers for the industry. The automatic enrolment of workers into retirement plans that the sector has long been advocating for, and the annuitisation of provident fund benefits – which has been delayed over and over...