December 2022

OECD Pensions Outlook 2022

The OECD Pensions Outlook discusses how to introduce, develop and strengthen asset-backed pension arrangements, the role that employers can play in their provision, and the implication of different fee structures on individuals saving for retirement and on providers. The 2022 edition focuses on describing best practices for developing mortality tables and providing policy guidance on how to design, implement and continue the operation of non-guaranteed lifetime retirement income arrangements. Get the report here

June 2022

Hong Kong passes long-awaited labour bill to scrap MPF offsetting mechanism, protecting workers’ pensions

Move ends decade-long debate between bosses and unions, preventing employers from dipping into staff pensions to cover severance and long-service payments Three legislators from pro-business Liberal Party were among those who opposed bill Hong Kong’s legislature has passed a long-awaited labour bill that will stop bosses from dipping into staff pensions to cover severance and long-service payments, ensuring the city’s workers have better retirement protection. The Legislative Council on Thursday voted 72-5 to approve the Employment and Retirement Schemes Legislation...

April 2022

Swedish regulator to screen funds for ‘green painting’

Sweden's financial regulator said it will start reviewing funds to enforce new sustainable regulations and to prevent "green painting." The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, or Finansinspektionen, said it will review "whether the information provided about the funds that are classified as most sustainable meets the strict requirements" of sustainable finance disclosure regulation rules implemented in March 2021. In a notice on its website Tuesday, FI said that as demand for green and sustainable funds increases rapidly, "this entails the risk of...

Bad Retirement Savers Expect to Die Young

By Allison Bell What workers think about their retirement savings is closely related to how long they think they will live, according to a new Club Vita life expectancy survey. Workers who said that their savings would be enough to pay for a comfortable retirement agreed with Club Vita about how long they might live. Workers who said their savings would be too small to pay for a comfortable retirement predicted that they would die about 7.1 years earlier than Club Vita would have...

Kenya. Treasury cuts pensions and gratuity cash by Sh42bn

The Treasury has cut the budget for paying retired public servants by nearly Sh42.50 billion, pointing to a growing backlog which will not be cleared by end of June. The expenditure on pensions and gratuities for the current financial year has been slashed to Sh111.14 billion from earlier estimates of Sh153.64 billion, according to fresh estimates Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani has tabled in the National Assembly. This came after Mr Yatani said payroll for the public service pension was growing...

Japan’s population down 640,000 in 2021, biggest drop on record

Japan's population totaled 125,502,000 as of Oct. 1, down 644,000 from a year earlier, marking the biggest decline on record, according to government data released Friday. The fall was attributed to stricter border restrictions propelled by the coronavirus pandemic, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said. The tally includes foreign nationals. Tokyo's population shrank for the first time in 26 years. All of Japan's 47 prefectures except Okinawa posted a fall in the number of residents in the year to...

US. Mexican immigrants have to work longer due to inadequate Social Security benefits, study finds

Mexican immigrants are a critical part of the American workforce, but they are also financially vulnerable. As Emma Aguila explains in new research she co-authored in the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Mexican immigrants face greater obstacles in securing social security benefits and therefore have to work later into life. Equally important, Aguila and her colleagues, Zeewan Lee and Rebeca Wong, found Mexicans who do receive those benefits are more likely to rely on them compared to non-Hispanic white populations. However, an...

March 2022

Over a third of people would accept lower pension savings for ethical investments

Over a third of people would accept lower pension savings for ethical investments

More than a third (37 per cent) of people would be willing to accept some reduction in their pension savings if their investments were made more ethically, a study by the High Pay Centre and Survation has found. Read also UK. Creating a sustainable retirement plan Of those surveyed, two-thirds (66 per cent) said that they wanted their pension fund to reflect their ethical values and beliefs. Almost a third (29 per cent) considered insufficient pension savings as the biggest threat to...

US. Milliman analysis: Competitive pension risk transfer buyout rate hits all-time low in February, at 98.9%

US. Milliman analysis: Competitive pension risk transfer buyout rate hits all-time low in February, at 98.9%

Milliman, Inc., a premier global consulting and actuarial firm, today announced the latest results of its Milliman Pension Buyout Index (MPBI). As the Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) market continues to grow, it has become increasingly important to monitor the annuity market for plan sponsors that are considering transferring retiree pension obligations to an insurer. During February, the estimated cost to transfer retiree pension risk to an insurer in a competitive bidding process decreased from 99.9% of a plan's total liabilities...

UK. Investment approach is increasingly key to pension endgames

UK. Investment approach is increasingly key to pension endgames

Aon has said that with 2022 promising to be another active year in the UK pension risk settlement market, an increasing number of schemes are focusing on their investment approach in the bid to be ‘settlement ready’. Aon’s recently released Global Pension Risk Survey 2021/22 showed that more UK defined benefit (DB) pension schemes are now opting for buyout as their long-term target rather than just self-sufficiency. To prepare for that, schemes are ever more aware that they need to...