August 2022

ESG and Private Market Assets: UK, EU, and Australian Investors Shifting the Trillions (2022 – 2026)

By M. Nicolas J. Firzli, Nick Sherry & Guan Seng Khoo The co-authors of the article, are amongst the original coiners of term such as “infrastructure as an asset class” and “pension superpowers.” They also predicted, at the onset of the Covid Crisis, that a “historic realignment on the asset allocation front is happening precisely at the moment when ESG is moving centre stage: even in once staunchly neoliberal jurisdictions like Texas, Alaska or Switzerland, the smart money is betting on...

State and Local Government Employees Without Social Security Coverage: What Percentage Will Earn Pension Benefits that Fall Short of Social Security Equivalence?

By Jean-Pierre Aubry, Siyan Liu, Alicia H. Munnell, Laura Quinby & Glenn Springstead Social Security is designed to provide a base of retirement income, to be supplemented in part by employer-sponsored retirement plans. However, approximately one-quarter of state and local government employees are not covered by Social Security, which federal law allows if their employer-provided plans provide comparable benefits. Yet many public pensions are less generous for recent hires, raising questions of whether those plans will still provide Social Security–equivalent benefits....

Recessions and Retirement: New Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Courtney Coile & Haiyi Zhang The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the US labor market, leading to an unprecedented loss of 22 million jobs in March and April 2020. Evidence from past recessions indicates that economic downturns are typically associated with an increase in retirements. In this study, we revisit the relationship between recessions and retirement in the COVID-19 era, using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) supplemented by other data on economic and COVID conditions. We find that higher...

GOP Fury Over ESG Triggers Backlash With US Pensions at Risk

Investment professionals are warning that a Republican campaign seeking to wipe ESG off the financial map puts at risk the savings of ordinary Americans caught in the political crossfire. Read also United States: ESG And Political Climate Changes Environmental, social and governance investing is now under attack in the world's largest economy. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this week banned state pension funds from screening for ESG risks. Texas is seeking to isolate financial firms it says are hostile toward the fossil-fuel...

México. Gobierno perfila incremento presupuestal para programas sociales en 2023

Para el Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación 2023 se perfila un incremento en los recursos que serán destinados a programas sociales como becas y pensiones, reveló a diputados de Morena el titular de la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP), Rogelio Ramírez de la O. Luego del encuentro privado que sostuvo con la bancada guinda en el marco de su tercera Reunión Plenaria, el presidente de la Comisión de Presupuesto y Cuenta Pública, Erasmo González Robledo, subrayó que...

Climate Risk and Indian Pension Funds

Since Reserve Bank of India (RBI) published its discussion paper on climate risk for stakeholder consultation it is somewhat puzzling to notice that other financial regulators have not taken a similar approach to gauge the extent of climate risk in their respective domains. Climate risk, being a systemic risk, will impact the entire financial sector. Let us take the case of pension funds. Globally, since the signing of UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), major pension funds such as the Ontario...

Perú. David Tuesta: “Hay que demostrarle a la gente por qué destinar recursos para pensiones es importante”

David Tuesta, exministro de Economía y presidente del Consejo Privado de Competitividad, explicó que el motor para la promoción de los sistemas previsionales debe ser convencer a la población de que destinar recursos a sus pensiones de jubilación es una decisión que deben valorar. En tal sentido indicó que la alta informalidad del país impide que buena parte de la población tenga afiliación a las Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones (AFP) o que den contribuciones seguidamente. “Creo que lo que uno...

US. Texas’s threat to boot BlackRock from pension funds forces corporations into can’t-win battle over ESG investing

Hi from Geneva, Switzerland. Peter Vanham here, filling in for Alan. I’m Fortune’s newly minted executive editor, responsible for the Connect learning platform. I’ll also be joining Alan in writing on corporate America’s turn to stakeholder capitalism and sustainable business practices. Speaking of which, in the latest backlash to ESG, Texas state comptroller Glenn Hegar yesterday listed BlackRock and nine other asset managers using ESG investing as “financial companies that boycott energy companies.” He warned BlackRock and Co. would be “subject...

Gobierno de Chile prevé enviar el proyecto para reformar el sistema de pensiones en 2023

El gobierno chileno prevé enviar al Congreso un esperado proyecto para reformar el controvertido sistema de pensiones durante el próximo año, dijo este martes el ministro de Hacienda, Mario Marcel. El sistema actual de Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones (AFP) privadas ha sido duramente criticado por las bajas jubilaciones que paga y su modificación fue una de las mayores demandas de las protestas sociales que estallaron en el país a fines del 2019. Durante una presentación ante diputados, el jefe de...

Nigeria. Pencom to push pension remittances, attract informal sector operators

The National Pension Commission is taking urgent steps to enforce remittances of pension deductions by employers and to widen its public awareness of the Micro Pension Plan (MPP) in other to encourage participation among operators of the informal sector, in the country The Head of Micro Pension Department, Mr. Dauda Ahmed, said in Abuja, yesterday, that MPP was a veritable tool against poverty at old age, which he observed has been the worst challenge of people employed in the informal...