November 2019

05Nov

Bulgaria. New proposal for the minimum pension

CITUB proposed the minimum pension to be increased by 14 percent or from BGN 219.43 to BGN 250 as of July 1, 2020. In this way, 850,000 retirees will receive this increase and will feel that this time the government, parliament and society are being empathetic and concerned, CITUB said. The CITUB has estimated that the additional cost for this measure is not negligible - about BGN 80 million, but it is fully achievable. "And the social and even political...

November 5, 2019
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04Nov

US. Coal Mine Workers Pension “Death” Deserves An Autopsy

A forensic review of the endangered mine workers pension should be undertaken immediately. Workers and retirees deserve answers and once the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation takes over the plan, it will be too late. The bankruptcy of Murray Energy, America’s largest private coal mining company has coal workers “nervous and scared” for their pensions, says CNN. The company is seeking to dramatically slash its liabilities through bankruptcy, including $8 billion of pension and retiree healthcare obligations. Murray...

November 4, 2019
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04Nov

UK. NHS misses deadline for staff pension statements

The NHS missed its three-month deadline for issuing pension statements to more than 4,000 staff this year as the service struggles to cope with requests from doctors worried about tax bills. Between January and September, the NHS pension scheme received 15,200 requests from hospital consultants for an annual allowance statement, which is needed to assess their tax position. But one in four of those requests — or 3,824 — were not completed within the target timeframe, according to a...

November 4, 2019
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04Nov

Canada. Are automatic DC plan features affecting the pension gender gap?

With cohorts in the workforce behaving differently as they prepare for retirement, it’s important for plan sponsors to consider these differences along gender and generational lines. At Benefits Canada’s 2019 Defined Contribution Investment Forum in Toronto on Sept. 27, Jean Young, senior research associate at the Vanguard Center for Investor Research, shared a survey that found women (60 per cent) are slightly more likely than men (58 per cent) to participate in voluntary retirement plans. However, women have a...

November 4, 2019
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04Nov

These are the hottest fintech startups and companies in the world

It's a fascinating time for fintech. What was once a disruptive force in the financial world has become standard practice for many industry leaders. Fintech industry funding has already reached new highs globally in 2018, with overall funding hitting $32.6 billion at the end of Q3. Some new regions, including South America and Africa, are emerging on the scene. And some fintech companies, including a number of insurtechs, have dipped into new markets to escape heightened competition. Now...

November 4, 2019
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04Nov

A micro-macro economic analysis of pension auto-enrolment options

By Maxime Bercholz, Adele Bergin, Tim Callan, Abian Garcia Rodriguez, Claire Keane Like many other countries, Ireland faces challenges in relation to the adequacy and sustainability of pensions. These challenges have been examined in detail in a series of reports (Government of Ireland, 2007; OECD, 2014; Government of Ireland, 2018a). All of these reports identify pension coverage in the private sector as a key issue. Burke and Gilhawley (2018) estimate that only 30% of the private sector in Ireland had a supplementary pension1 in 2017....

November 4, 2019
Books, Books, Pension design,
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04Nov

Behind the Success of Dominated Personal Pension Plans: Sales Force and Financial Literacy Factors

By Giuseppe Marotta (Department of Economics Marco Biagi and CEFIN) The revealed preference for dominated insurance-based personal pension plans in Italy is a decade-long puzzle. I surmise that a motivation from the supply side is a sales force factor deriving from the geographical distribution of financial providers, including the countrywide network of the state controlled Post Office. I provide supporting evidence using three biennial waves of the Bank of Italy’s survey on household finances from 2010 to 2014. The time...

November 4, 2019
Articles, Savings,
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04Nov

Evidence on Usage Behavior and Future Adoption Intention of Fintechs and Digital Finance Solutions

By Johannes M. Gerlach (Chair of Financial Services, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Heinrich-Heine-University) & Julia K. T. Lutz (Chair of Financial Services, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Heinrich-Heine University) Financial Technology Companies are gaining popularity and becoming more relevant within financial services industries worldwide. This growth can be encouraged by the EY FinTech Adoption Index, which indicates a global average FinTech Adoption of 33.0% in 2017. With regard to Financial Technology Companies and Digital Finance Solutions, this...

November 4, 2019
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04Nov

Stewardship in the UK – The 2019 Draft Stewardship Code in Context

By Eva Micheler (London School of Economics - Law Department) The article interrogates the idea of creating a market for stewardship and identifies obstacles that stand in the way of such a market. In particular tax relief for pension investments deprives pension investors from an incentive to monitor investment and demand stewardship activity by their service providers. By granting tax relief the government has become a financial contributor to and a stakeholder in the financial services industry that services pensions....

November 4, 2019
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October 2019

31Oct

UK. Delivering pension dashboards

The inclusion of the pension dashboards among the announcements in the Queen’s Speech on October 14 was an important step forward for this initiative, reflecting support from the government and enabling the industry to move forward to deliver dashboards with renewed vigour and certainty. Read also UK. Retirement income gender gap is the biggest in a decade While it has been pointed out that a lack of government majority in parliament means the proposals contained in the pensions bill might...

October 31, 2019
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