August 2019

12Aug

US. DOL Expands Retirement Plan Options For Smaller Businesses

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...

August 12, 2019
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09Aug

Club Vita Unveils New Model for Predicting Life Expectancy Based on ZIP+4 Codes, Modernizing Longevity Risk Management Techniques for U.S. Pension Plans

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...

August 9, 2019
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09Aug

US. Privacy: The Next Retirement Plan Frontier

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...

August 9, 2019
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08Aug

US. Public pensions returns lowest in three years

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...

August 8, 2019
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07Aug

Stanford analyzed 292 retirement strategies to determine the best one—here’s how it works

In 2017, the Stanford Center on Longevity analyzed 292 different retirement income strategies and determined the best way for most people to withdraw their savings. It’s called the “spend safely in retirement strategy” (SSiRS) and involves two basic components: delaying Social Security benefits and creating an “automatic retirement paycheck.” In a new 2019 report, “Viability of the Spend Safely in Retirement Strategy,” the research team took a deeper dive into the SSiRS and explored different ways to implement it....

August 7, 2019
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03Aug

The False Promise of Portman-Cardin Pension Reform

By Michael Doran This article analyzes the pension-reform bill introduced in 2019 by Senator Portman and Senator Cardin. Earlier Portman-Cardin bills, enacted in 1996, 2001, and 2006, substantially increased the amounts that higher-income families can save in tax-qualified retirement plans and IRAs, but they included only modest and mostly ineffective measures to encourage retirement savings by lower- and middle-income families. Despite the tens of billions of dollars in tax subsidies spent under the earlier Portman-Cardin legislation, retirement-account values today...

August 3, 2019
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03Aug

Multiemployer plans: evaluating a proposal to spread the pain

By Alicia Munnell, Jean- Pierre Aubry, Wenliang, Hou, Anthony Webb The Multiemployer Pension Reform Act (MPRA) allows multiemployer plans facing insolvency to apply for approval from the Treasury to cut accrued benefits of plan members to prolong plan solvency—a departure from the benefit protections of Employee Retirement Income Security Act. To assess the law's impact, this paper models Central States Teamsters – by far the largest – plan to have applied under the new law to reduce benefits. Using...

August 3, 2019
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02Aug

US. DOL Small Business Retirement Plan Rule Not The Cure-All That’s Needed

In a nod to the small business community, the Department of Labor issued a final rule earlier this week that may nudge more employers to offer joint retirement plans—MEPs—but it’s not all that employers were hoping for. “This is NOT the MEPs that everyone has been so excited about,” says Nevin Adams, chief of marketing for the American Retirement Association via email. The DOL rule, effective September 30, allows companies in different industries to band together to create a...

August 2, 2019
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01Aug

US. Tennessee pension fund investments in marijuana company generates smoke

After discovering retirement plan invested in medical cannabis firm, pot-wary Tennessee to sell stock In a Republican-led state where many top officials, including Gov. Bill Lee, oppose legalizing even medical marijuana, Tennessee's massive $52 billion retirement plan holds a $720,000 investment in the nation's blazing-hot pot industry. The Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System's passively invested small-company stock fund, based on Standard and Poor's S&P Smallcap 600 index, owns 7,009 shares in San Diego-based Innovative Industrial Properties Inc. A real estate...

August 1, 2019
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01Aug

MetLife, Prudential Report Big Profit Gains

The nation’s two biggest life insurers posted sharply higher net income for the second quarter. MetLife Inc. nearly doubled its second-quarter profit, helped by improved investment results and derivative gains on a financial hedging program. At rival Prudential Financial Inc., net income rose to $708 million from $197 million a year ago. The year-earlier results were depressed by a net charge of $1.23 billion, primarily for bolstering Prudential’s reserves for long-term-care insurance policies in a product line it discontinued......

August 1, 2019
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