September 2022

Informality and the Challenge of Pension Adequacy: Outlook and Reform Options for Peru

By Christoph Freudenberg, Frederik G Toscani Past reforms have put the Peruvian pension system on a largely fiscally sustainable path, but the system faces important challenges in providing adequate pension levels for a large share of the population. Using administrative microdata at the affiliate level, we project replacement rates in the defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pillars over the next 30 years and simulate the impact of various reform scenarios on the average level and distribution of pensions....

Philippines. Reforming the private pension system

The Philippine private pension system has serious flaws that need to be fixed. It is not portable, not funded, not adequate, not actuarially fair, not sustainable. As a consequence, it does not ensure the continued well-being or provide a comfortable living for our retirees, especially future retirees coming from the millennial workforce and the next generation. Based on a 2018 study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the Philippines will be an ‘aging population’ by 2032 when 7...

August 2022

South Korea. At stake is how to reach consensus on contentious issues

The government has finally set about to reform the four major public pensions. In a policy briefing to President Yoon Suk-yeol last Friday, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said it would integrate the national pension with the three occupational pensions ― for public servants, veterans and teachers. It will then link them to the basic pension for people aged 65 and older. The ministry plans to complete the national pension's financial calculation by next March and submit a...

Commentary: The U.S. and Mexico need a binational retirement policy

By Jacqueline L. Angel & Emma Aguila Population aging is complicating retirement planning for Americans, and specifically for immigrants. As a 2017 National Academy of Science study showed, Mexican immigrants who arrive at older ages often struggle to support themselves in the United States and often consider returning home. Yet we lack a binational retirement policy that addresses those concerns. We need bilateral agreements that enable Medicare coverage in Mexico, and a Social Security “totalization” agreement allowing Mexican workers in the...

The Misery of Spending Down the Nest Egg: The Effect of Annuitization on Consumption and Wellbeing

By Yu Gao, George Loewenstein & Xianghong Wang We study the effects of annuitization compared to spending down a lump-sum on consumption and subjective wellbeing. Analyzing longitudinal data on UK retirees before and after the pension reform that provided greater freedom to draw down savings, we find that annuitization increased retirees’ consumption and life satisfaction. To further examine the behavioral channel of these effects, we conducted a field experiment with college students, giving them a flow or lump-sum payment. As...

CFA Society Germany proposes merger of occupational with private pension systems

CFA Society Germany, the association of investment professionals, has proposed the merger between the country’s occupational and private pension systems under a format based on models in place in Sweden and Canada to cut administrative and sales costs that would lead to an increase in the level of pensions. The models would cater for two different market segments, one including savers opting for a standardised, state-run pension product, and another for savers who demand control over investments, the association said...

July 2022

Italy. Pensions at the center of the electoral campaign, here are the parties’ proposals

The issue of pensions, like every electoral round, has forcefully entered the center of the campaign for the vote on 25 September. Silvio Berlusconi immediately launched the minimum pensions of one thousand euros, a proposal already in the past relaunched by the Brothers of Italy (to be financed with a cut in citizenship income). The League has already re-proposed Quota 41 (the possibility of going out with 41 years of contributions regardless of age, ed). In the center-left there...

IMF Engagement on Pension Issues in Surveillance and Program Work

By IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is increasingly involved in offering policy advice on public pension issues to member countries. Public pension spending is important from both fiscal and welfare perspectives. Pension policy and its reforms can have significant fiscal and distribution implications, can influence labor supply and labor demand decisions, and may impact consumption and savings behavior. This technical note provides guidance on assessing public pension systems’ macrocriticality, i.e., sustainability, adequacy, and efficiency; it also discusses the issues...

Government creates multisectoral commission to evaluate the Peruvian pension system

The Executive ordered the creation of a temporary multisectoral commission, dependent on the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which will be in charge of preparing the technical reports that contain an evaluation of the Peruvian pension system, as well as a normative proposal to create the new pension system. pensions. The task of the working group created by Supreme Decree No. 081-2022-PCM, which was published in the newspaper El Peruano, will be to prepare a technical report containing an...

Warning over pension change for South Africa

Retirement funds will have to invest in upskilling trustees to empower them to navigate the complex world of infrastructure investing opened up by the gazetting of the amendments to Regulation 28 of the Pensions Fund Act, says Andrew Davison, chair of the Investments Committee of the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA). The new Regulation 28 investment limits allow retirement funds to invest up to 45% of assets in South African infrastructure projects, effective from the beginning of January 2023. Infrastructure...