November 2024
19Nov

Danish pension fund targets Asian clean energy bets

By Hugo Cox   PensionDanmark, Denmark’s $51 billion pension fund, has identified clean energy solutions, including many in Asia, as its number one sustainability priority for 2025. It is aiming to build on existing direct allocations in the region, which include wind and solar projects in India, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan. “We are now heavily involved in green energy infrastructure development projects throughout the region," Jan Kæraa Rasmussen, head of ESG and sustainability at PensionDanmark in Copenhagen told AsianInvestor. "It’s a very important market...

November 19, 2024
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14Nov

UK. HMRC issues National Insurance act fast warning to boost State Pension before cut-off date

The deadline for those impacted by new State Pension transitional arrangements is fast approaching HM Revenue and Customs bosses have issued a message to people to act ahead of a looming deadline. HMRC officials have disclosed that more than 10,000 payments, amounting to £12.5 million, have been made through the new digital service to boost individuals' State Pensions since its launch in April. With less than six months left to address any National Insurance (NI) record gaps dating back to...

November 14, 2024
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13Nov

Brazil’s aging population poses challenges, economists warn

By Marsílea Gombata Brazil is set to experience rapid demographic changes within the next 20 years, which could slow economic growth and increase expenditures on healthcare and pensions. However, these shifts are not being adequately considered in government decision-making, according to economists from the Fundação Getulio Vargas’s Brazilian Institute of Economics (Ibre-FGV). They caution that, from a budgetary standpoint, the government should exercise greater caution with projected spending in areas like education, given the anticipated decline in the population aged...

November 13, 2024
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12Nov

Canadian sustainability investment standards to launch in December

The Canadian edition of an international set of sustainability investment disclosure standards will be officially released in December, according to the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board. The organization was tasked with creating a set of sustainability investment standards in Canada based on those created by the International Sustainability Standards Board. The two new disclosure metrics — CSDS 1 and CSDS 2 — will be voluntary and are designed to offer consistency, comparability and transparency to sustainability reporting for institutional investors to...

November 12, 2024
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11Nov

South Africa. How CDC may revolutionise the pension industry

A look at how collective defined contribution schemes differ from DB and DC schemes and why SA’s pension industry should note the shift in the UK. The local pension industry seems poised to embrace the collective defined contribution (CDC) model in the future despite their complexities. New administration systems to accommodate these types of structures will have to be designed as well as new regulations to govern them. An employer and member education drive to explain how these...

November 11, 2024
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October 2024
22Oct

Life expectancy may be reaching upper limits—for now

By William Mair     A paper published in Nature Aging earlier this month concluded that it’s unlikely that we will see significant leaps in human life expectancy this century. William Mair, professor of molecular metabolism at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, shares what researchers know about the biology of aging, the importance of improving health span, and the need to take moonshots. Q: What did the study find and what conclusions can we draw from it? A: The study looks back at advances in...

October 22, 2024
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17Oct

US Is Sleepwalking Into an Economic Storm

By Daron Acemoglu   Daron Acemoglu, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received the Nobel in economic science this year. Inflation seems under control. The job market remains healthy. Wages, including at the bottom end of the scale, are rising. But this is just a lull. There is a storm approaching, and Americans are not prepared. Barreling toward us are three epochal changes poised to reshape the U.S. economy in coming years: an aging population, the rise of artificial intelligence and...

October 17, 2024
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August 2024
19Aug

Low financial literacy leaves Kenya’s pension coverage at 26%

By MARTIN MWITA   Low financial literacy and awareness among the Kenyan population is to blame for the low pension coverage in the country which remains at a low of 26 per cent, industry players now say. A huge number of Kenyans also work in the informal sector, where pension schemes are either unavailable or underutilised. Without targeted interventions, these individuals remain vulnerable, lacking the financial safety net that pensions provide, the Association of Pension Trustees and Administrators of Kenya (APTAK) has noted. The association...

August 19, 2024
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July 2024
30Jul

Ghana’s Constitutional Conundrum: A call for reform

By Joseph Bagah   Ghana’s constitutional framework has been a subject of concern, and a lot of brainstorming has gone on for many years. The practice where Members of Parliament (MPs) play dual roles or serve multiple positions as Ministers has raised questions about whether conflict of interest situations do not arise and the lines between Legislative and Executive blurred. This concentration of power has resulted in a lack of accountability and transparency in governance perpetuating a system where those who...

July 30, 2024
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May 2024
23May

There’s a bold fix to America’s broken retirement system

By Teresa Ghilarducci     In March, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink made headlines with a shareholder letter warning about our broken retirement system, noting that "nearly half of Americans aged 55 to 65 reported not having a single dollar saved in personal retirement accounts. Nothing in a pension. Zero in an IRA or 401(k).” The American worker knows the retirement system is broken and they don’t like it. In a recent national survey, 79% of those who responded said that America is facing a...

May 23, 2024
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