July 2024
22Jul

Exiled pro-democracy Hong Kong activists blocked from accessing pensions

Two exiled pro-democracy Hong Kong activists have been blocked from accessing their pensions, depriving them of tens of thousands of US dollars of their savings and raising questions about the complicity of western financial institutions in the persecution of Chinese government critics. Assets, including pension savings, belonging to Ted Hui, a former pro-democracy legislator who is now based in Australia, were frozen shortly after he fled from Hong Kong in December 2020. The assets are held by HSBC, a British bank. HSBC briefly unfroze Hui’s...

July 22, 2024
News, ,
Read more...

June 2024
14Jun

3M to transfer pension-payment obligations for 23,000 U.S. retirees

3M to book a charge of nearly $1 billion as it transfers some of its pension obligations to Met Tower Life 3M Co. said Thursday it will transfer about $2.5 billion of its pension-payment obligations to Metropolitan Tower Life Insurance Co. The consumer- and industrial-products company (MMM) said the transfer, which will affect the pension payments of about 23,000 U.S. retirees, won't change the amount of the monthly benefit payments. The only change is who is making the payments. 3M, which makes...

June 14, 2024
News, ,
Read more...

April 2024
19Apr

“Safe” Annuity Retirement Products and a Possible US Retirement Crisis

By Thomas E. Lambert & Christopher B. Tobe This paper examines a looming possible crisis in many Americans’ retirement plans due to the proliferation of annuity products in their retirement investment portfolios. As defined benefit pension plans have almost completely disappeared as a means of retirement savings and have been replaced by defined contribution retirement plans over the last 40 to 50 years, a great number of private and public sector defined contribution retirement plans have become laden with insurance...

April 19, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , ,
Read more...

March 2024
22Mar

The Riccati Tontine: How to Satisfy Regulators on Average

By Moshe A. Milevsky & T. S. Salisbury This paper presents a new type of modern accumulation-based tontine, called the Riccati tontine, named after two Italians: mathematician Jacobo Riccati (b. 1676, d. 1754) and financier Lorenzo di Tonti (b. 1602, d. 1684). The Riccati tontine is yet another way of pooling and sharing longevity risk, but is different from competing designs in two key ways. The first is that in the Riccati tontine, the representative investor is expected -- although...

March 22, 2024
Articles, Pension design, ,
Read more...
21Mar

2023 US life statutory results: Individual annuity growth hits 21-year high

A resilient domestic economy, rising interest rates and ample supply of attractive products led to outsized expansion in individual annuities during a year of otherwise mixed growth in business volumes for the US life insurance industry. According to estimates from S&P Global Market Intelligence, individual annuity direct premiums and considerations surged by 21.8% in 2023. This data, aggregated from individual entity reports available as of March 11, marks a third straight year of double-digit growth, and the most substantial annual...

March 21, 2024
News,
Read more...
06Mar

Expert panel: How DC plan members can hedge longevity risk for more effective decumulation

Retiring baby boomers are in an era of decumulation anxiety, as they convert their pension assets into income that they fear won’t hold up over the entirety of their retirement. The decumulation problem is complex for defined contribution pension plan sponsors because it involves transferring lump sum pension assets to retirees who may lack investment expertise and who may not know how to distribute their savings to cover their entire retirement horizon. It’s not obvious how to calibrate between having the desired...

March 6, 2024
News, , ,
Read more...

February 2024
13Feb

Vietnam’s workers cash out pensions early ahead of new law

Vietnam is amending its pension laws in an attempt to deter people from abandoning the fund before retirement. Yet in some quarters, the pending change is having the opposite effect. Many workers critical to the world's electronics and clothing supply chains were already taking early payouts to deal with hardships, such as those brought on by the pandemic. Now, more of them are getting jittery after hearing the upcoming law could cut payouts in half, and the communist country is...

February 13, 2024
News, ,
Read more...

January 2024
25Jan

Kenya. Pensioners in tears over their delayed gratuity

“I regret having ever worked for the government,” says Mama Pauline Kiragu before she falls into deep silence. This is the cry for justice for millions of aging Kenyans — who worked in the civil service — waiting for pension payments running into billions of shillings. After many years of toil, most of them have retired home lonely fighting vagaries of old age, sickly, weak, dependent and poor. Thousands are unable to access their savings for upkeep and medical care. Others have...

January 25, 2024
News, ,
Read more...
22Jan

UK woman’s pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she’s alive

A retired UK teacher's pension has been stopped after her provider repeatably refused to believe she's still alive. The Guardian have reported that 85-year-old Eileen McGrath was forced to endure Christmas with no pension payments after Teachers’ Pensions confused her for someone else, who was dead. “In November I had received two letters from Teachers’ Pensions asking me euphemistically if I was dead,” she said. “I immediately called to make it clear that I was very much alive. Nevertheless, a week...

January 22, 2024
News,
Read more...
18Jan

Ghana. Academic activities to halt as SSA-UoG, FUSAG declare ‘indefinite strike action’

The Senior Staff Association-Universities of Ghana (SSA-UoG) and the Federation of Universities Senior Staff Association of Ghana (FUSAG) have declared an indefinite industrial action with immediate effect. The decision follows, among other things, the failure of the government to address the above bodies’ concerns regarding pensions and the reversal of what they describe as an illegal cancellation of their overtime allowance. Speaking at a news conference at the University of Ghana, Legon, in Accra, the National Chairman of the SSA-UoG, Isaac...

January 18, 2024
News,
Read more...