October 2021

Benchmarking Retirement Income Systems Around the World: Which Countries Rank Highest and Why?

By David Knox The variety of retirement income systems around the world is great, with varying dependencies on public-sector pensions, funded private pensions, and savings outside these formal systems. But which are producing the best outcomes? And which are sustainable into the future, as many countries face the effects of a significantly aging population? The Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index considers more than 40 indicators in calculating an index value for the systems in 16 countries covering more than half...

Ros Altmann: Could pensions be used to boost more sustainable investing?

As we rebuild the economy after Covid-19 and pursue the government’s aims to ‘Level up’ and ‘Build back better’, the greening of finance has become increasingly important. With the impacts of climate change ever more apparent, politicians seek to appeal to the ‘green vote’. The legislative measures to boost the battle against climate change include: mandating the UK’s main financial regulators to factor in climate-related issues; statutory requirements for pension schemes to address the international Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures...

September 2021

Horizon Effect on Optimal Retirement Decision

By Junkee Jeon, Minsuk Kwak & Kyunghyun Park We study an optimal consumption, investment, life insurance, and retirement decision of an economic agent who has an option to retire early any time before the mandatory retirement date. We conduct a thorough theoretical analysis for the optimal retirement problem with general utility function in the presence of mandatory retirement date, which leads to the optimal stopping problem in finite horizon. Furthermore, different marginal utility of consumption before and after retirement is...

June 2021

3 hurdles to sustainable investing — and how to overcome them

Can sustainable investing save the world?Jason Jay, director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, thinks so — with three caveats. In a March 2021 talk, part of the MIT Impact Investing Initiative spring speaker series, Jay laid out the case for sustainable investing and outlined three major challenges. Sustainable investing is at a tipping point, said the MIT Sloan senior lecturer. “What’s been happening over the last 20 years — and really accelerating over the last five years — is that...

May 2021

US. Strong Stock Market Boosts 401(k) Investors’ Equity Exposure

A surging stock market, coupled with slow and steady trades into equities, brought 401(k) investors in April to their highest level of equity exposure since 2001, according to the Alight Solutions 401(k) index. During the month, nearly all the trading days favored equities over fixed income; four days favored fixed income funds, and 17 days favored equity funds. Also of note was the fact that April has no days of above-normal trading activity. The average net trading activity was a mere...

US. How Mass Retirement Is Affecting the Bond Market

Public work is a different ballgame, but in the private sector, defined benefit pensions have largely been replaced by 401(k) plans. However, there's still a massive amount of pension liabilities floating around in the market, and with mass retirement setting in, how those funds are managed can affect retirees everywhere – regardless of work history. Read also US. Biden’s $86 Billion Pension Rescue Set to Boost Corporate Bonds “There remains $1.8 trillion in assets in the largest 100 public companies’ pension...

April 2021

Preqin Markets in Focus: Latin America’s Growing Appetite for Alternative Assets

Changing demographics, policy shifts, and a growing base of highly sophisticated investors make Latin America an increasingly attractive source for private capital. Likewise, local institutional investors in Latin America are eager to put capital to work with top performing fund managers, both inside and outside the region, with an emphasis on absolute return. Where do GPs believe the best opportunities can be found? Preqin is delighted to bring Latin American alternatives markets into the spotlight with our new report, combining comprehensive...

March 2021

“Pensions for women, the challenges ahead. International Women’s Day Selection of News and Research”

UK. Pension challenges women face will impact on their retirement 03/12/21 March 8 marks International Women’s Day and celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Ghana. Low financial literacy responsible for low patronage of pensions by women and informal workers 03/12/21 A Compliance officer with the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) says low financial literacy is the cause of low patronage of the pension scheme among women and people in the informal sector. Taking a workforce break to raise children...

January 2021

Nigeria. Pension funds take up investing in Bitcoin

Pension funds have already begun investing in the world’s most popular crypto asset, Bitcoin, according to the biggest crypto hedge fund firm, popularly known as Grayscale. In a recent Bloomberg interview, Grayscale CEO, Sonnenshein, disclosed on the pension industry joining hedge funds and other institutional firms in gaining exposure to Bitcoin through his firm portfolio, better known as Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. We’ve started to see participation not just from the hedge fund segment, which we’ve long seen participation from,...

September 2020

US. Pension fund, MIT launch social investing project

The Massachusetts state pension fund is teaming up with the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative to try to improve the data available to investors who want to make decisions based on things like the way a company treats its workers, its carbon emissions or its product safety record. As socially responsible investing expands rapidly across the globe, the Aggregate Confusion Project with the Pension Reserves Investment Management Board aims to cut through the noise around Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)...