August 2021
20Aug

China plans $1.72bn national pension company

China plans to set up a national pension company in Beijing with registered capital of 11.15 billion yuan ($1.72 billion) as the country's population rapidly ages. Seventeen financial institutions will take stakes in the company, including the wealth management units of China's big five banks, each with 1 billion yuan, or 8.97%, the Insurance Association of China said Thursday in a statement on its website. China's largest brokerage, Citic Securities; Taikang Life Insurance; and the investment arm of Beijing's State-owned...

August 20, 2021
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19Aug

China’s pension funds post surge in investment returns in 2020

Chinese pension funds posted an investment return rate of 15.84% last year, nearly doubling the 20-year average of 8.51%, a report from the National Council for Social Security Fund showed on Wednesday, partly due to a jump in domestic stock markets. China, the world's most populous country, has been looking to boost its investment returns and size of its pension funds, to cope with a looming demographic crunch as population growth slows. To counter the economic impact of rapid ageing and...

August 19, 2021
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12Aug

Why it is important to start pensions early

Young savers and the self employed saw the largest proportional increases in financial vulnerability during the pandemic, rising by more than 40 percent, according to the Financial Conduct Authority. Since young people are now more likely to be much less comfortable retiring than their parents, it is important to start preparing for retirement sooner rather than later. Advice firm Purely Pensions has warned that savers in their 20s could lose more than £21,000 at retirement if they put off making contributions...

August 12, 2021
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09Aug

World’s Largest Pension Fund GPIF Now Holds Record $1.75 Trillion in Assets

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund posted a fifth consecutive quarterly gain in its investments as returns from overseas assets helped make up for losses on domestic equities. Read also Nigeria. N12trn pension assets investment sidelines infrastructure The world’s biggest pension fund gained 2.7% for the quarter ended in June, boosting assets under management by 4.98 trillion yen ($45.4 billion) to a record 191.6 trillion yen, it announced on Friday. Overseas stocks were its best-performing investment, returning 8.6%, while domestic shares lost...

August 9, 2021
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09Aug

Nigeria. N12trn pension assets investment sidelines infrastructure

Federal Government’s dream of ramping up pension assets for investments into infrastructure development seems floundering as most recent report shows a stagnation in funds allocation to the sector. Meanwhile the bulk of the over N12trillion assets are going into Federal Government Bond borrowing instrument which are used for government recurrent expenditure. At the backdrop of the quest to address the huge infrastructure gap in the country, the pension policy had envisaged about 15 percent of the total pension asset would be...

August 9, 2021
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06Aug

What’s the Ideal Asset Mix in Retirement? Is It 70/30? 60/40?

My wife and I are approaching retirement, and our financial adviser is recommending that we put about 70% of our nest egg in stocks and about 30% in bonds. This approach seems risky to me. Is it? My preferred mix is about 60/40. We hear questions frequently about asset allocation and pinpointing an optimal mix. The easy answer is: It depends. It depends, among other factors, on your ages, income from other sources (like Social Security and maybe a pension),...

August 6, 2021
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05Aug

US. Government to pilot online retirement application

By Jessie Bur Federal employees planning to retire may soon have the option to complete the requirements using an online system, rather than through the paper format most widely used across the U.S. government. Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja told reporters on an Aug. 4 call that the agency will pilot an online retirement application system to address some short-term problems with the federal retirement system, namely slow processing times. Modernization of the federal retirement system has been a central...

August 5, 2021
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04Aug

US. Lockheed Martin offloads $4.9 billion in pension liabilities

Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethesda, Md., purchased group annuity contracts from Athene Holding Ltd. to transfer about $4.9 billion in U.S. pension plan liabilities. The purchase completed Tuesday will transfer the benefit-paying responsibilities for about 18,000 U.S. retirees and beneficiaries to Athene's wholly owned subsidiaries Athene Annuity and Life Co. and Athene Annuity & Life Assurance Company of New York, a news release from the aerospace and defense company said Tuesday. The Athene subsidiaries will begin paying benefits to the retirees and...

August 4, 2021
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03Aug

Europe’s Pension Funds Still Don’t Know How to Treat a Key Risk

The main organization representing European pension funds says it’s still not clear how the industry should balance financial returns against a desire to do more environmental and social investing. The lack of clarity means pension investors representing about $5 trillion may be putting less cash than they otherwise might into sustainable assets. That’s as the need for a decisive reallocation of capital toward planet-saving goals grows more urgent as global warming becomes increasingly deadly. How asset managers treat ESG risk will...

August 3, 2021
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July 2021
30Jul

Is the Aon/WTW deal collapse a positive for UK pensions?

The announcement that Aon and Willis Towers Watson (WTW) have called off their $30bn (£21.7bn) merger after the businesses reached an impasse with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) over competition issues did not come as a huge surprise to many. While the two firms received approval (with conditions) for the merger by the European Commission in July, the tie-up had become increasingly bogged down over issues with the DOJ - issues which cumulated in the US agency filing a...

July 30, 2021
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