October 2023
27Oct

Canada. Finance ministers to meet on Alberta’s proposal to leave Canada Pension Plan

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has agreed to convene a meeting with provincial and territorial finance ministers to discuss Alberta’s proposal to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan. The agreement comes after Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy called for the meeting in a letter to Freeland, saying Alberta’s withdrawal could cause “serious harm.” Freeland says any province has the right to leave the program, but it’s important the decision “be based on facts and be clearly and well informed. “It is absolutely my...

October 27, 2023
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24Oct

Zimbabwe seeks compensation for pensioners whose savings were wiped out in 2009

Zimbabwe wants the retirement industry to help compensate pensioners who lost their savings 14 years ago following a bout of hyperinflation that led to the collapse of the local currency and its eventual scrapping in favour of the US dollar. The switch to the greenback immediately wiped out the value of Zimbabwe dollar-denominated investments, leaving thousands of pensioners destitute. The payment of compensation is a key step toward helping restore confidence across the retirement industry, said Grace Muradzikwa, head of...

October 24, 2023
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17Oct

Majority of employees back proposed reforms to UK pension system

The majority (88 per cent) of employees back the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association’s (PLSA) proposed reforms to the UK pensions system, research by the association has found. In particular, the research found that more than half (53 per cent) of employees agree that contribution levels should rise gradually over the next decade from 8 per cent to 12 per cent, while 21 per cent of respondents were unsure. In addition to this, nearly half (46 per cent) agreed that employers...

October 17, 2023
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13Oct

Large parts of Asia are getting old before they get rich

A bulge in a country’s working-age population is a blessing. Lots of workers support relatively few children and retired people. So long as the labour market can absorb a surge of job-seekers, output per head will rise. That can boost savings and investment, leading to higher economic growth, more productivity gains and developmental lift-off. Yet for countries that fail to seize this opportunity, the results can be grim—as many developing countries may soon discover. Consider Thailand. It is rapidly greying....

October 13, 2023
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09Oct

Why we often struggle to pivot from saving to spending

Here's the retirement quandary for many Americans. They spend years building good financial habits so, if all goes well, they have sufficient funds by the end of their working years. Then, when it’s time to transition, they often struggle in the shift from saving to spending their nest egg. The no-stress years suddenly become the all-stress years. "It's disappointing to get to your first couple of years of retirement, and just constantly be stressed out about your income generation strategy from...

October 9, 2023
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09Oct

Kenya. Pension fund assets up Sh127bn on NSSF new rates

Pension fund assets rose by Sh127 billion in the first half of this year, boosted in part by the introduction of higher mandatory contributions to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and exchange gains on offshore investments. The 8.1 percent growth to Sh1.704 trillion was also boosted by new investments in Real Estate Investment Trusts (Reits), including the Sh6.92 billion Laptrust Imara Investment Reit (I-Reit) which was listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) in March. Read: Pension funds fail to...

October 9, 2023
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06Oct

The Vanguard Retirement Outlook: A national perspective on retirement readiness

By Fu Tan, Fiona Greig, Andrew S. Clarke, Kevin Khang, Kate McKinnon & Victoria Zhang The global retirement landscape is changing. As populations age, government retirement benefits are under pressure. At the same time, the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution workplace retirement plans means that workers bear more responsibility for managing capital markets risk and turning accumulated savings into retirement income. And many workers have no access to a workplace plan. In the United States, the figure is about...

October 6, 2023
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04Oct

Ghana. Government settles all outstanding pensions contributions ending August 2023

The Chief Executive of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Hayford Attah Krufi, has revealed that government has cleared all outstanding Tier 1 and Tier 2 pension contributions ending August 2023. According to hin, the payment was done in September 2023, after government finalised the Domestic Debt Exchange Porogrammme. “About ¢2.3 billion payments has been released to clear all these arrears”, Mr. Krufi stressed. Background The 2022 Financial Stability Review report released by the Bank of Ghana showed that government had defaulted on...

October 4, 2023
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02Oct

UK. Concerns over self-employed pension adequacy persist

Self-employed workers could boost their retirement resilience by paying into their partner's pension, Hargreaves Lansdown has said, after its analysis raised concerns over the current level of pension saving amongst the self-employed. According to the latest data from the Hargreaves Lansdown Savings and Resilience Barometer, self-employed led households scored 53/100 for their financial resilience compared to 67/100 among employee-led households. However, the firm clarified that the picture is "a bit more nuanced than this", as households where the self-employed worker is...

October 2, 2023
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September 2023
29Sep

US. More Evidence Suggests State-Sponsored Retirement Plans Close the Coverage Gap

Analysis of the first state-sponsored retirement plan for uncovered workers—OregonSaves—supports earlier findings that auto-IRAs do, in fact, close the coverage gap. More specifically, a new paper examined Oregon’s program, started in 2017, which requires employers who did not offer any workplace retirement savings plans to automatically enroll employees into a Roth IRA through payroll deduction. The study assessed the impact of mandated automatic enrollment rather than voluntary automatic enrollment, enabling the examination of changes in employer behaviors for those obliged to...

September 29, 2023
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