Taking care of the aging population is a crisis in the making, and no one — not families, not government programs and not the health care workforce — is prepared for it. The big picture: Providing health care to aging Baby Boomers will strain Medicare’s finances, but the problem is even bigger than that. Long-term care — the kind of services typically performed in a nursing home or by a home health aide — largely falls through the cracks...
Dirk Hofacker, Moritz Hess, Stefanie Konig To a backdrop of ageing societies, pension crises and labour market reforms, this book investigates how the policy shift from early retirement to active ageing has affected individual retirement behaviour. Focusing on eleven European countries, the United States and Japan, it brings together leading international experts to analyze recent changes in pension systems. Their findings demonstrate that there has been a fundamental transition in pension policies and a steep increase in...
This week, the U.K.’s Financial Times covered an important and overlooked aspect of how the U.S. treats its elders: bankruptcy. Stories of seniors filing for bankruptcy are heartbreaking and uncomfortable, so I am not surprised that it took a correspondent paid by a foreign newspaper (Patti Waldmeir) to tell this American story from the lobbies of our bankruptcy courts. Like every good story, there are complicated victims and more than one perpetrator. Everyone has a role in the “crime.” Victims In Elder Bankruptcies Bankruptcy in...
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the nation's most prestigious universities, stands accused of hurting workers in the company's retirement plan by engaging in an improper relationship with the financial firm Fidelity. A lawsuit headed to trial in September alleges that MIT ignored the advice of its own consultants and allowed Fidelity to pack the university's retirement plan with high-fee investment funds that ended up costing employees tens of millions of dollars. In return, the lawsuit said, MIT...
While it's not surprising that the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act is tangled in a political decision-making web, it's reassuring that the conversation about helping Americans save for retirement is still on the docket. After all, this would be the most significant retirement legislation since the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which among other reasons, is why financial advisers must consider the potential challenges and opportunities once the law is passed. (Fingers crossed for this...
I was standing at the top of the highest point in Africa – Mt. Kilimanjaro – with friends and clients several years ago. I considered all of the hours of meticulous planning and training that went into the successful five-day hike to the top. While struggling to catch my breath at nearly 20,000 feet above sea level, I had a somewhat disturbing epiphany. My journey was not over. In fact, it was far from over. I was standing on...
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has released a final rule which should make it easier for smaller businesses to provide retirement plans to their employees. According to the DOL, the rule will enable more small and midsize unrelated businesses to join forces in multiple employer plans (MEPs) that provide their employees a defined contribution plan such as a 401(k) plan or a SIMPLE IRA plan. Certain self-employed individuals also can participate in MEPs. In October 2018, the DOL...
Club Vita, a provider of longevity risk data, announced today the publication of a new white paper, “Zooming in on ZIP Codes,” which addresses how integrating ZIP codes and identifying other socioeconomic factors can help pension plan sponsors better capture diversity and sharpen life expectancy estimates for their participants. Having accurate estimates is essential for sponsors as they assess how much money to save to make their future payments. Club Vita teamed up with Mercer, a global consulting leader...
The loss of Americans’ privacy through the growing use of their data continues to be a major topic in the media. This focus is now turning to the retirement industry. Plan and participant data plays a key role in our retirement system – from the basic operation of retirement plans, to designing wellness solutions, implementing distributions and beyond. Almost all aspects of plan operation and participant interaction rely on data. Notably, plaintiffs’ lawyers have begun to focus on...
More trouble could be on the horizon for American’s big pension plans. Publicly-funded plans with more than $1 billion in assets generated a median return of 6.79 percent in the 12 months that ended on June 30, according to data from Wilshire Consulting provided exclusively to The Wall Street Journal. Public pension plans expect to generate a median return of 7.25 percent, which means the past year fell short of expectations – for the first time since 2016, as...
