September 2021
01Sep

US. Indiana Public Retirement System posts net 23.1% return for fiscal year

Indiana Public Retirement System, Indianapolis, returned a preliminary net 23.1% for the fiscal year ended June 30. The preliminary net return of the system's $38 billion defined benefit plan was higher than its policy benchmark return of 22.4% in the year ended June 30 as well as in other reported time periods as of the same date. For the three, five and 10 years ended June 30, the DB plan returned preliminary annualized net returns of 10.7%, 9.9% and 7%, respectively,...

September 1, 2021
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August 2021
31Aug

Does the U.S. have a retirement crisis?

By Alicia H. Munnell At the end of a recent conference, the perennial question arose — once again — as to whether the United States faces a retirement crisis. Read also U.S. corporate pension funding rises in August – 2 reports I’ve never been wedded to the word “crisis,” but the Center’s National Retirement Risk Index (NRRI) suggests that about half of today’s working-age households are at risk of not being able to maintain their standard of living in retirement. While the...

August 31, 2021
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Students demand that teacher pension fund revoke fossil-fuel investments
30Aug

US. Students demand that teacher pension fund revoke fossil-fuel investments

More than 500 Bay Area high school students gathered outside the San Francisco Federal Building on 7th Street Friday before marching down Market Street to City Hall, calling on the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, the state’s pension fund for California public school teachers, to divest its investment holdings in fossil fuel companies. They pointed out that that California’s wildfires demonstrate the need to reduce emissions. “This climate strike has been going on for years, but we’re feeling the effects of climate...

August 30, 2021
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27Aug

US. How to Plan for Retirement in a Gig Economy

Being your own boss. Making your own schedule. Taking control of your career. Those perks and others—including not worrying about being downsized by your company—drive professionals into self-employment all the time. In fact, the gig economy keeps growing year after year. How big is the gig? Pretty enormous. The month before the 2020 pandemic exploded, CNBC reported that independent contractors made up anywhere from 10% to a third of workers. Then, Covid hit, and though some freelancers lost their work,...

August 27, 2021
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26Aug

The New Income Projection Rules for Defined Contribution Plans

By Richard L. Kaplan & Barry Federici The SECURE Act enacted at the end of 2019 requires that defined contribution retirement plans provide plan participants will projections of how much monthly income their accumulated balances will generate upon their retirement. This article analyzes the new Labor Department regulations that go into effect on September 18, 2021 and suggests various revisions, including an explanation of likely tax consequences. Source: SSRN 613 views

August 26, 2021
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26Aug

US. Retirement Tax Benefits Exacerbate Racial Inequities

By Steve Rosenthal In a recent report co-authored with University of Chicago Professor Daniel Hemel, I described how our retirement tax system favors the rich disproportionately. Read also A New Look at Racial Disparities Using a More Comprehensive Wealth Measure But it’s worse than that: Our system of generous tax subsidies for retirement savings—such as 401(k) plans, other defined contribution plans, and individual retirement accounts (IRAs)—also exacerbates racial inequities. Due in part to these tax breaks, the gap between the average retirement...

August 26, 2021
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25Aug

How Blockchain Can Transform Retirement Planning

Retirement planning deals with massive amounts of data clusters across multiple processes. Keeping participants’ assets safe is one of the major responsibilities of plan providers to ensure customer trust. Read also Canada. Union Files Legal Challenge Over OMERS’ Early Retirement Policy Defined contribution (DC) plans such as the National Pension Scheme in India and 401(k) in the US have become mainstream, but there is no designated registry to track all the retirement plan accounts and their status on one platform. The...

August 25, 2021
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25Aug

Why The Decline In Life Expectancy Shouldn’t Affect Your Retirement Plans

By Bob Carlson Average life expectancy in the U.S. declined by 1.5 years in 2020, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is believed to be the largest one-year decline in life expectancy since at least World War II. Life expectancy was 77.3 years in 2020, about the same level as in 2003. Life expectancy should be a major factor in retirement planning. I often recommend that one of the first steps in developing a...

August 25, 2021
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24Aug

US. Companies Find It’s a Good Time to Push Pension Obligations Off Balance Sheets

Finance chiefs are stepping up their efforts to move pension obligations off company balance sheets through annuity purchases and other financial tools, taking advantage of well-funded plans and a respite from the scramble over the past year to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. For years, sponsors of single-employer pension plans have purchased annuities from an insurer for all or some of their employees with vested benefits, thus shrinking a plan’s assets and liabilities and simultaneously strengthening a company’s balance sheet....

August 24, 2021
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24Aug

US. Despite the pandemic, 401(k) balances and savings rates are higher than ever

Even with climbing Covid-19 case numbers and ever-increasing inflation, employed retirement savers have been socking away record amounts of cash in their retirement investment accounts. Average 401(k) account balances and savings rates reached record highs in the second quarter of 2021, according to Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest provider of 401(k) plans, marking three quarters of upward growth in a row. Another positive sign for savers’ finances: The number of outstanding 401(k) loans also decreased. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic,...

August 24, 2021
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