October 2022

Herd Behaviour of Pension Funds by Asset Class

By Jacob Antoon Bikker & Ian Koetsier This study investigates asset herd behaviour for Dutch pension funds from 1999 to 2014 using quarterly data. We find herd behaviour for investments in twenty asset classes including non-traditional asset classes, and to both purchasing and selling. Pension funds’ herd behaviour is particularly high in alternative investments, which might increase herding in general, as pension funds move their portfolio towards these assets in recent years. Herding intensity is higher during stock market crises,...

Liability Driven Investment and Asset Allocation inspired by JPM LTCMA

By Eddy H. Verbiest A white-box deterministic system simulates long-term LDI cashflows using as input J.P.Morgan Long Term Capital Market Assumptions adapted to make them interest rate dependent. Trading, coupons and dividends provide cashflows to pay liabilities and extract excess cash to stakeholders while maintaining the allocation weights and target lifes. Performance is measured by FixPct: the annually extractable Fixed Percentage of remaining liabilities to run-off to zero. This measure summarizes the interplay of drivers over many decades and allows...

Panorama Social de América Latina 2021

Por Alicia Bárcena, Mario Cimoli, Raúl García-Buchaca, Alberto Arenas de Mesa, Rolando Ocampo, Simone Cecchini, Ana Güezmes & Sally Shaw El Panorama Social de América Latina es preparado anualmente por la División de Desarrollo Social de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), dirigida por Alberto Arenas de Mesa, y la División de Estadísticas de la CEPAL, dirigida por Rolando Ocampo. En su elaboración participan también el Centro Latinoamericano y Caribeño de Demografía (CELADE)-División de Población de la CEPAL, dirigido...

Las garantías de pensiones mínimas en sistemas de contribución definida en América Latina: un nuevo pasivo contingente

Por Pessino Carola & Cont Walter Frente a beneficios previsionales de los regímenes de capitalización en niveles mucho más bajos que los previstos, los gobiernos de la región de América Latina han logrado garantizar pensiones mínimas a sus beneficiarios; sin embargo, carecen de estimaciones robustas de los pasivos fiscales contingentes asociados a las garantías. Sobre la base de un modelo de microsimulación, en este documento se llevan a cabo proyecciones hasta el año 2100 para Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador,...

Impact funds grow 40% over last two years, hitting $1 trillion

Impact investing has soared 40% over the past two years, according to a fresh analysis, as more money flows into strategies that actively seek to save the planet and its people. Investor allocations to impact investing, which targets specific environmental, social or governance outcomes instead of just screening for ESG risks, now stands at more than $1 trillion, according to the Global Impact Investing Network. That growth feeds into a maelstrom of discordant views around ESG that have plunged the once...

Ireland. Government Pushes Ahead With Pension Auto Enrolment

The government has approved the details of its new pension auto-enrolment scheme in what Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys described as a "generational reform" of the Irish pensions system. The General Scheme of the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System has now been referred to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection for pre-legislative scrutiny. If passed into law, the scheme will require workers to pay into a voluntary workplace pension scheme, co-funded by their employer and the state on an...

Disconnected: Reality vs. Perception in Retirement Planning

By Martha Deevy & Steve Vernon This report examines potential interventions and messaging that can help pre-retirees and retirees plan ahead regarding important retirement decisions. The widespread lack of forward-looking planning has vexed retirement planners and researchers for many years. Many problems in later years could have been prevented with planning ahead. Too many people put off making important decisions, only to find themselves later in a serious crisis with limited options. Our research identified interventions and messaging that could be used by...

Investors’ Activity in Response to Information About Their Pensions

By Amedeus Malisa This paper uses individual-level data on fund choices in the Swedish Premium Pension to analyze how investors respond to information about their pension savings. The Swedish Pensions Agency mails an annual information letter, the Orange Envelope, to investors to provide them with tailored information about their public pension accounts. This paper examines the effect of pension communication in the Swedish Premium Pension System (PPS) by exploiting the staggered roll-out of these letters across different Swedish counties. Results...

The Effect of Removing Early Retirement on Mortality

By Cristina Bellés-Obrero, Sergi Jimenez-Martin & Han Ye This paper sheds new light on the mortality effect of delaying retirement by investigating the impacts of the 1967 Spanish pension reform. This reform exogenously changed the early retirement age, depending on the date individuals started contributing to the Social Security system. Those contributing before 1 January 1967 maintained the right to voluntarily retire early (at age 60), while individuals who started contributing after that date could not voluntarily claim a pension...

Pension funds in sub-Saharan Africa

By Owen Nyang`oro & Githinji Njenga The population structure the world over is going through a demographic shift, and the elderly proportion is projected to increase with population growth. This change is a matter of concern for sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, where the majority of the people are young and the rates of both population growth and unemployment are high. A good pension system provides elderly assistance and is a source of savings for long-term investment. The pension systems in...