May 2019

03May

How the FCA is saving UK fintech industry from Brexit fallout

By Ian McKenna The regulator’s latest Business Plan emphasises a commitment to supporting innovation Few things drive the adoption of technology more than regulation; there has always been a symbiotic relationship between the two. I can’t remember a document in the past few years that has better demonstrated this than the FCA 2019/20 Business Plan published a couple of weeks ago. The document should be essential reading for anyone involved in industry technology. It presents an almost endless list...

May 3, 2019
News, OP Ed
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April 2019

29Apr

Opinion. Poland’s latest pension reform is good for the government, bad for savers

Recently announced reforms to Poland’s pension system are just the latest in a long line of changes made over the past eight years. Unfortunately, the majority of these have been motivated by short-term goals (either fiscal or political), without looking at the long-term stability of the pension system. Sadly, the current changes follow the same pattern. After lowering the retirement age to 65 (for men) and 60 (for women) and announcing discretionary one-off payments for pensioners before this year’s...

April 29, 2019
News, OP Ed,
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March 2019

27Mar

The phony retirement crisis

By Andrew Biggs Contrary to the alarms, household savings are growing. But government plans are underfunded. Lawmakers are taking action to deal with the “retirement crisis.” More than 200 House Democrats are sponsoring a bill to expand Social Security benefits, funded by a dramatic increase in taxes. California, Connecticut, Illinois and Oregon have established state-run retirement plans for private sector-workers, which many progressives hope will supplant 401(k)s. But there is no retirement crisis among either today’s retirees or tomorrow’s. Eight in 10...

March 27, 2019
Articles, Management, OP Ed, Savings, Slider-Left, System Sustainability, , ,
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December 2018

21Dec

Historical and Social Reasons Why Sacrifice As a Plan Fails

There were some emails about my article about being able to feed 40 billion people with today’s agricultural productivity. Food, energy, water, and ecosystems are connected. The complexity of those systems is secondary.Why do people have large families? What is happening within countries that go from poor and breeding to wealthy and stabilized? Very big events in history show the uselessness of some of the arguments that are made about the topic of overpopulation. Family Size, Public Health and...

December 21, 2018
News, OP Ed
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19Dec

How millennials should think about retirement saving

For millennials, retirement may be more of a challenge than for prior generations. They are almost certain to live longer than their parents, so their money will have to last longer and clear more hurdles along the way. For starters, no one really knows what Social Security is going to look like in 30 or 40 years. No matter how Congress adjusts the system over the next decade, younger workers shouldn’t count on receiving the same benefits as their parents. “I...

December 19, 2018
News, OP Ed
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August 2018

08Aug

Annuity Puzzle: how products are designed matters

By Eduardo Rodríguez Montemayor PPI’s Editorial Board editorial@pensionpolicy.net Getting an annuity with our savings pot at the time of retirement is the only contract that guarantees periodic pension payments for life. Yet, few people do it when offered to option to do so. What explains this puzzle? An annuity is a financial contract that pays out a periodic amount for as long as the annuitant is alive, in exchange for an initial premium. Defined-contribution (DC) pension schemes usually make it voluntary to choose whether to buy an...

August 8, 2018
Articles, Investing, Labor Market, OP Ed, Pension design, PPI’s original Op-Eds, Slider-Left, , , ,
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May 2018

18May

Save for our pensions? We millennials can barely find the money to live

I’m yet to see a zombie movie that portrays the most likely way that a post-apocalyptic world will play out: hungry pensioners roaming around; not yet dead, but no pension to keep them fed, looking for an arm to gnaw on. If you think I’m being disrespectful to elderly people, I’m not: that’s my future I’m talking about. Wednesday’s Royal London report, suggesting millennials need to save £260,000 for a pension, is exactly the sort of thing that could...

May 18, 2018
News, OP Ed, Slider
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April 2018

25Apr

Do pension participants want the freedom to choose or the freedom to snooze?

By Hendrik P. van Dalen and Kène Henkens Individual freedom of choice is a much heralded and cherished principle in democracies. Milton Friedman and colleagues at his alma mater, the University of Chicago, made this a cornerstone of their belief (Friedman & Friedman, 1990). The freedom of choice is the antidote to excessive government interference and an instrument which enables people to realize their goals and discipline agents and organizations. The call for freedom is getting louder as individualization of...

April 25, 2018
Articles, Investing, OP Ed, Pension design, PPI’s original Op-Eds, Savings, Slider-Left, ,
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January 2018

01Jan

Japan. ESG investing for innovation

By Peter David Pedersen I imagine most people know about the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals and, possibly, ESG investment. From working as a strategic advisor on corporate sustainability in Japan since the mid-1990s, I feel these two concepts represent major drivers of innovation for businesses across the world. ESG investment is a global movement that picked up speed around 2006, when the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) were launched at the New York Stock Exchange with more than 100 institutional investors as...

January 1, 2018
News, OP Ed, Slider
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December 2017

20Dec

The Pension Protection Fund aims to protect pensions – not management

By Nils Pratley It looks terrible for the Pension Protection Fund (PPF): the pensions lifeboat fund is planning to vote against a restructuring of the UK arm of Toys R Us, an action that could mean 3,200 people lose their jobs. On the company’s proposal, only 800 employees would depart and the others would resume the fight against Amazon’s invasion of the toy market. The PPF, however, is not to blame for this mess. Its hands are tied. The PPF’s jobis...

December 20, 2017
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