May 2024

UK government’s Pensions Dashboards Programme delayed

The UK government’s high-profile Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) is behind schedule due to ineffective governance and a lack of people with the right skills and experience, a National Audit Office (NAO) report has revealed. This has contributed to pushing the date for the new platform to be connected to providers to October 31, 2026, a year later than planned. Costs have also risen from £235 million ($295 million) in 2020 to £289 million in 2023, an increase of 23%. The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP)...

April 2024

UK. ‘Shocking’ tech leaves pensions industry in precarious position

The pensions industry has built up a ‘technical debt’ that must be addressed if it is to engage and educate savers, experts have warned. Delegates at the Pensions Administration Standards Association (Pasa) conference in the City of London were told pensions technology was at least “10 years behind” other industries. Paul Sturgess, director of Pasa said: “I fear that the time frame [for keeping up with available technology in other industries] has got bigger than the heady days of 2000.” Paul Leandro,...

The Future of a Hyper-Aging Society Navigated by Well-Being Technology

Today, humanity is experiencing a paradigm shift and transitioning to a new era. We live in a world where every person’s well-being - the happiness of the body and mind - is impacted by social environments born of numerous changes, including an aging and increasingly diverse society, changes to how and where we work, and outbreaks of emerging diseases. This changing panorama is raising people’s interest in well-being technology, as well as its value and importance. “Well-being technology” describes...

March 2024

How caregivers are using smart tech to help aging parents

As my mother reached her 90s, although she was relatively healthy and active, I realized that she was starting to experience some physical limitations and memory issues. And while I didn’t live far away, I knew that I needed to find a way to help her live on her own comfortably and safely despite her increased dependence. More traditional technologies, such as wearable alert systems, could only do so much (especially when she refused to wear them). So I...

February 2024

Can ChatGPT Plan Your Retirement?: Generative AI and Financial Advice

By Andrew W. Lo & Jillian Ross We identify some of the most pressing issues facing the adoption of large language models (LLMs) in practical settings, and propose a research agenda to reach the next technological inflection point in generative AI. We focus on four challenges facing most LLM applications: domain-specific expertise, an ability to tailor that expertise to a user’s unique situation, trustworthiness and adherence to the user’s moral and ethical standards, and conformity to regulatory guidelines and...

AI’s impact can’t be overstated – BlackRock and Invesco execs

By COURTNEY DEGEN   Artificial intelligence will have a tremendous impact on the economy, healthcare and other industries, executives from BlackRock and Invesco said Feb. 12 at the Exchange ETF conference in Miami Beach, Fla. "It's hard to overstate the impact of AI on the economy (and) on different industries," said Jay Jacobs, U.S. head of thematics and active equity ETFs at BlackRock. AI is what Jacobs called a "platform technology," meaning "it is going to bring other industries into the fold that maybe don't even exist...

The Role of AI to Enhance Retirement Savings: The Gender Gap Challenge

By Anabel Martínez Colín AI is the biggest disruptor in the financial sector, where there are many AI solutions at work, and the role of AI over it is well documented. However, the deployment of AI in the pension segment is still at an exploratory stage, and its influence on the gender gap in pensions is still unclear. This research explores the relationship between AI readiness and the gender gap in pensions (GGP), which may also be statistically significant. In addition,...

Will AI revolutionize the retirement industry?

A recent survey from Professional Pensions showed 17% of pension experts think Artificial Intelligence (AI) will revolutionize the industry a great deal, while 60% agreed it will to some extent. Only 7% argued AI will not change the way things in the industry are done. With that backdrop, the EBRI-Milken Institute 2024 Retirement Symposium’s panel, Innovations and FinTech: Developments that Can Enhance Financial Security, Retirement Planning and Spending Down Assets, discussed the nature of AI within the retirement planning process. Yon...

January 2024

Ghana. Health sector occupational pension scheme launches new mobile app to enhance services

Health Sector Occupational Pension Scheme (HSOPS) has launched a new mobile application to enhance services to its tier-two pension scheme beneficiaries. The mobile application will allow beneficiaries to access and update their information, follow up on their contributions as they are provided with in-dept analysis of their investments. It also provides a link to the HSOPS website which connects every member to the main database where each member could track their contributions, access and print membership certificates, make benefit projections and...

December 2023

AI poses risks to U.S. economy, Financial Stability Oversight Council says

For the first time, the Financial Stability Oversight Council in its annual report identified artificial intelligence as a vulnerability in the U.S. financial system. The council said financial institutions, market participants and regulatory authorities should further build expertise and capacity to monitor AI innovation and usage, and identify emerging risks. "AI has the potential to increase efficiency and innovation, but it also introduces certain risks," the council said in its report released Dec. 14. "Monitoring these rapidly emerging technologies will continue to be...