April 2023
05Apr

How America Saves 2022

By Vanguard Over the past decade, retirement plan sponsors have increasingly turned to automatic solutions to influence employee retirement saving behavior. As a result, plan participation rates have increased, automatic enrollment designs have become stronger, and participant portfolio construction has continued to improve with more age-appropriate asset mixes and less extreme equity allocations. During 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact many parts of the economy. While it pushed to recover, the economy faced prominent headwinds that stoked several forms of...

April 5, 2023
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March 2023
24Mar

COVID-19 Private Pension Withdrawals and Unemployment Tenures

By Tristram Sainsbury, Robert V. Breunig & Timothy Watson This is the first study to evaluate the effects of early pension withdrawal policies on tenures on unemployment payments in the COVID-19 context. We use a novel set of linked whole-of-population administrative records to examine more than half-a-million Australians who found themselves newly on an unemployment payment in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate that receiving a lump sum of up to A$10,000 from superannuation accounts at the...

March 24, 2023
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February 2023
23Feb

Australia plans to limit early access to retirement funds, cut tax breaks

Australia's centre-left government said on Thursday it would push ahead with plans to change superannuation rules, including restricting early access to funds until retirement and limiting tax breaks for high-earners. The Labor government earlier this week launched a consultation on reforming superannuation - or retirement fund - saying it wanted the A$3.3 trillion ($2.3 trillion) pension system to become sustainable and equitable in the face of mounting pressure on the federal budget. "We are not trying to revolutionise the system, but...

February 23, 2023
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08Feb

Pension Withdrawals Drain Savings in Chile and Peru

By Richard Francis, Kelli Bissett-Tom & Christopher Dychala Peru, Chile and Bolivia have allowed early withdrawals from their funds as a source of relief for households and to support recoveries during the pandemic and the global price shock. But these have had negative financial and confidence ramifications, contributing to downgrades of Peru in 2021 and Chile in 2020. Longstanding private pension funds have been important supports for sovereign creditworthiness where they exist in Latin America. Pension fund assets have supported sovereign...

February 8, 2023
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08Feb

Early Pension Withdrawals in Chile During the Pandemic

By Olga Fuentes, Olivia S. Mitchell & Félix Villatoro Chile, with one of the largest and best funded defined contribution programs in Latin America, held over USD $200 bn in assets at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, or more than 80% of GDP. Reacting to populist pressures during the pandemic, however, the government gave non-retired participants three separate opportunities to tap into their retirement accounts, leaving some 4.2 million participants with zero retirement savings and draining around $50 bn...

February 8, 2023
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January 2023
23Jan

US. 32% of Savers Tapped Their Retirement Accounts Last Year to Cope With Inflation. That’s a Problem

Inflation surged in 2022, burdening consumers of all ages. If you took a retirement plan withdrawal to cope with inflation, it's imperative that you try to compensate this year. Motley Fool Issues Rare “All In” Buy Alert Higher living costs forced some people to resort to drastic measures. Lawmakers were generous with stimulus aid in 2021, and that helped many Americans cope with the pandemic and subsequent economic crisis. But a troubling thing happened as a result. Consumers suddenly found themselves flush with cash...

January 23, 2023
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September 2022
30Sep

The Safe Withdrawal Rate: Evidence from a Broad Sample of Developed Markets

By Aizhan Anarkulova, Scott Cederburg, Michael S. O'Doherty & Richard W. Sias We use a comprehensive new dataset of asset-class returns in 38 developed countries to examine a popular class of retirement spending rules that prescribe annual withdrawals as a constant percentage of the retirement account balance. A 65-year-old couple willing to bear a 5% chance of financial ruin can withdraw just 2.26% per year, a rate materially lower than conventional advice (e.g., the 4% rule). Our estimates of failure...

September 30, 2022
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26Sep

Nigeria: PenCom Approves Use of 25% Pension Savings for Mortgage

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has issued Guidelines on Accessing Retirement Savings Account (RSA) of 25 per cent savings to pay equity contribution for residential mortgages by RSA holders. The commission said the approval is in line with Section 89 (2) of the Pension Reform Act 2014 (PRA 2014), which allows RSA holders to use a portion of their RSA balance towards the payment of equity for residential mortgages. PenCom, therefore, directed interested RSA holders to contact their Pension Fund Administrators...

September 26, 2022
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20Sep

UK. Early pensions access could encourage people to save, says ACA

Younger generations could be encouraged to save more for the long-term if the state allowed them to dip into their retirement savings early in order to cover urgent essential expenditure. This is according to evidence submitted by the Association of Consulting Actuaries for a Treasury Select Committee inquiry examining whether the current suite of tax reliefs represent good value for money. The ACA said too many people currently do not have a cushion of adequate immediate-access savings that would cover unexpected...

September 20, 2022
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09Sep

Spending Elasticity and Optimal Portfolio Risk Levels

By David Blanchett, Jeremy Stempien Research on optimal retirement strategies overwhelmingly assumes that the retirement income goal is effectively inelastic (or fixed), which implies the retiree household has neither the desire nor the ability to cut back on spending for the entire duration of retirement (which is often assumed to last 30+ years). This is an incredibly unrealistic assumption that has significant implications on a myriad of retirement decisions. This piece focuses on how spending elasticity impacts optimal portfolio risk...

September 9, 2022
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