January 2023

US. Retirement legislation to cool off after SECURE 2.0

The retirement industry received some welcome news late last year when lawmakers passed another major bipartisan retirement security package, but industry sources aren't expecting 2023 to yield many more legislative victories when it comes to retirement issues. "Everything that they could find where there was bipartisan agreement made it into this bill," said Michael P. Kreps, Washington-based principal and co-chairman of the retirement services practice at Groom Law Group, about SECURE 2.0, a retirement security bill attached to a $1.7...

The Effect of Required Minimum Distributions on Intergenerational Transfers

By: Jonathan M. Leganza How do households use retirement savings accounts in retirement? The answer to this question is important for tax policy pertaining to retirement savings. I shed light on this question by studying how households respond to Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) regulations, which mandate withdrawals from retirement accounts upon reaching a specified age. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study and a regression discontinuity design, I estimate the causal effects of aging into RMD regulations. First, I...

Secure Act 2.0: A Missed Opportunity to Enhance Retirement Equity

By Albert Feuer SECURE Act 2.0, which was enacted on December 29, 2022, represents a missed opportunity to enhance retirement equity. The Act’s 92 provisions provide small new tax incentives to those American workers struggling to save for a comfortable retirement, larger tax incentives to those with few retirement concerns, more complex retirement tax rules, and weaken compliance rules that are primarily applicable to those with few retirement concerns. Source @Papers

US. Investors’ resolve to forge ahead with ESG goals deepens for 2023

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and anti-ESG sentiment in the U.S. taught institutional investors to expect the unexpected in 2022, but those developments also deepened their resolve to forge ahead with sustainable investing goals — no matter what happens in the upcoming year. In 2023, institutions' ESG goals will include more specific expectations placed on companies to address climate risk, labor and human rights issues including diversity, and biodiversity, investors said. Many of them also plan to make a more direct...

EEUU. Nueva asistencia federal para la jubilación de quienes trabajan por cuenta propia

La nueva ley – Secure 2.0 Act – provee contribuciones directas a los ahorros de retiro para trabajadores de ingresos moderados y bajos, pero no comenzará hasta 2027. Los trabajadores de la denominada gig economy – personas empleadas a corto plazo o por cuenta propia – no mantienen ahorros para el retiro similares a los de los empleados en puestos tradicionales de trabajo.  Parte de una nueva ley federal podría ayudarles a equiparar la diferencia. Según una encuesta de Pew Charitable...

Life expectancy in the U.S. has declined. What does that mean for your retirement?

Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its most recent U.S. life expectancy estimates, and sadly, the report found that, once again, Americans’ average number of years remaining have fallen. As reported recently, life expectancy at birth is now 76.4 years (as of 2021), down from 77 a year earlier. This is a drop of approximately 7 months over a one-year period, which takes life expectancy back almost a quarter-century to 1996. This decline is certainly...

US. Financial Planning for Retirement: It’s More Accessible, but Be Careful

I’ve been writing and researching articles on finance and money for most of my career, and covering retirement for the past 15 years. But my wife and I haven’t picked a stock or mutual fund for our own retirement accounts since the late 1990s, or written our own retirement plan. For that, we rely on a financial planner. Hiring a planner is one of the smartest financial moves we have made. This type of advice was once a subset of...

Investing novices call the shots on $4 trillion at public pensions

Canada selects directors to oversee its public pension funds for their financial expertise and pays some six-figure salaries. In the Netherlands, board members must obtain approval from the central bank. In the U.S., a lineup of unpaid union-backed reps, retirees and political appointees are the vanguards of a $4 trillion slice of the economy that looks after the nation’s retired public servants. They’re proving to be no match for a system that’s exploded in size and complexity. The disparity is dragging...

U.S. corporate pension funding holds steady at 95% despite market volatility

  U.S. corporate pension plan funding ratios remained steady in 2022 despite significant market volatility, according to a new analysis from Willis Towers Watson. The analysis, which examined pension plan data from 356 Fortune 1000 companies, estimated their aggregate funding ratio to be 95% at the end of 2022, the same as a year earlier. According to the analysis, Willis Towers Watson estimated that the pension plans finished 2022 with $1.22 trillion in assets, down 26% from $1.65 trillion a year earlier,...

December 2022

U.S. New York Raises Cap on Pensions’ Private Equity, Hedge Fund Assets

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill on Friday that allows the state’s and New York City’s pensions to increase allocations to more expensive and opaque asset classes like private equity that could potentially deliver higher returns. The bill raises the cap on alternative assets — which also include hedge funds, private real estate and direct loans to companies — as well as foreign stocks, to 35% from 25%. Boosting the limit will allow pensions, including the $233 billion...