June 2023

U.S public pensions are building for the long-term. How pension plans are reacting after a year of shocks

By Ortec Finance U.S. public pension plans have been through a torrid year of investment volatility, rising inflation and increasing interest rates. The Federal Reserve has raised rates nine times in succession taking the rate to 5% - the highest since 2007 – while CPI inflation climbed as high as 9.1% in June 2022. The most recent figure of 4.9% for April is good news but many analysts still expect further Federal Reserve rate rises. The series of economic shocks helps explain...

May 2023

But What If a Pension Fund is Overfunded?

By James Tatum Currently, the consensus is that if a pension fund is less than 100 percent funded, it is underfunded.1 In other words, if the pension fund does not presently have all the assets needed to pay liabilities in the future (and without consideration of future contributions to the pension fund), the pension fund and retiree benefits are theoretically imperiled. So, out of concern for “underfunded” pension funds, of which there are many, there have been innumerable research papers,...

April 2023

Management of Retirement Funds by Republican vs. Democrat States: Understanding the Differences

By Mustafa O. Caglayan, Edward R. Lawrence & Robinson Reyes-Peña As most of the state pensions in the USA deal with their respective funding crisis, we compare the management approaches undertaken by funds located in the states that are governed by Republicans vis-à-vis funds that are located in states governed by Democrats. We find that pension funds located in states governed by Republicans display a lower funding ratio compared to the pension funds located in states governed by Democrats. The...

PensionBee. Annual Report and Financial Statements 2022

By PensionBee PensionBee is a leading online pension provider in the UK, with a mission to make pensions simple, so that everyone can look forward to a happy retirement. We are a direct-to-consumer financial technology company with approximately 183,000 Invested Customers and £3.0bn of Assets under Administration (‘AUA’) as at 31 December 2022 (2021: 117,000 Invested Customers and  £2.6bn of AUA). We deliver a leading customer proposition to pension holders in the UK defined contribution pensions market, catering for the mass...

March 2023

Sustainable Investment: Best Practice Disclosure Checklist for Pension Funds

By World Bank Group There are compelling reasons for asset owners – in particular large pension funds and sovereign wealth funds – to adopt sustainable investment, and for governments to support them in these endeavours. First, asset owners have a key role to play in providing the capital that supports national economic and development goals. Second, sustainability issues – for example, climate change, labour rights, public health – are important drivers of investment value. Third, asset owners play a key...

Does Common Ownership Affect Employee Welfare? Evidence from Corporate Pension Funding

By Charles Hsu, Zhiming Ma & Kaitang Zhou This study examines the effect of common institutional ownership on corporate pension funding. We posit that a common owner’s incentive to maximize shareholder value may come at the cost of employee welfare. Consistent with this prediction, we find robust evidence that firms with common ownership demonstrate greater pension underfunding than firms without common ownership. This effect increases with firms’ value-added activities, common owners’ shareholding, duration of ownership, and portfolio size. It decreases...

ESG and Climate Change: Pension Fund Dos and Don’ts

By Randy Bauslaugh Pension fund administrators have a fiduciary duty to prudently manage financial risks and opportunities when investing plan assets and when managing plan operations that are paid from the pension fund. This includes the financial risks and opportunities associated with climate change and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. But what are the legal dos and don’ts? Plan fiduciaries will always be on solid legal ground if they take ESG information into account for financial purposes – to...

Pension Administration in Nigeria: Lessons and Reflections

By Opeyemi Naimot Dawodu In every democratic society, from the jurisprudential perspective, there are certain ideals that must be present one of which is social justice. These ideals are aspirations and the nearer a society is to these aspirations, the better the society is. In a country like Nigeria, pension is one of the social objectives in partial fulfillment of the ideals present in Chapter 2 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended 2011) and as such how this...

Pension Funds and Sustainable Investment: Challenges and Opportunities

By P. Brett Hammond, Raimond Maurer, and Olivia S. Mitchell Pension Funds and Sustainable Investment: Challenges and Opportunities responds to rising global interest in environmental, social, governance (ESG), and impact investing to generate positive impact while generating financial return. Contributors explore the pros and cons of pension ESG investments and discuss case studies from the US and around the world. The findings will interest researchers, management/advisory firms, financial advisors, asset owners, and policymakers Read book here

January 2023

Should Labor Abandon Its Capital? A Reply to Critics

By: David H. Webber Several recent works have sharply criticized public pension funds and labor union funds (“labor’s capital”). These critiques come from both the left and right. Leftists criticize labor’s capital for undermining worker interests by funding financialization and the growth of Wall Street. Laissez-faire conservatives argue that pension underfunding threatens taxpayers. The left calls for pensions to be replaced by a larger social security system. The libertarian right calls for them to be smashed and scattered into individually-managed...