August 2021
11Aug

UK. Pandemic widens pensions pot gender gap

The gender pensions gap grew to nearly £200,000 this year as the Covid-19 pandemic took a heavy toll on women’s finances, according to new analysis. The difference between the average pension pots of men and women aged over 55 grew to £184,000 in 2021, or £26,000 more than the previous year, according to research published this week by more2life, an equity release provider. Around one-third of women who took part in a UK-wide survey that was part of the analysis said...

August 11, 2021
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10Aug

Asia vast savings can bring on an ‘age of sustainability’

Insurance companies, pension funds, and other institutional investors in Asia and the Pacific can pave the way to a resilient and sustainable future. The recent global public health crisis has revealed that economies can no longer afford to return to old ways of doing things. But there could be a silver lining in a coming “age of sustainability” in Asia and the Pacific that can get countries growing strongly again. Reaching this new age, however, will require greater use of insurance...

August 10, 2021
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July 2021
05Jul

India. Now, wider choice of pension funds in National Pension System

In order to make the National Pension System (NPS) more transparent, increase the subscriber base and ensure orderly growth, the pension fund regulator has taken a host of initiatives easing the process of transacting for the subscribers and the Points of Presence (PoP). The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has now issued guidelines for opening ‘on tap’ registration of pension funds on a continuous basis to manage the pension assets of NPS subscribers under central government schemes, state...

July 5, 2021
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June 2021
15Jun

APAC pensions industry and recent trends in Japan

Pension assets across the largest pensions’ markets increased 11% in 2020, according to the Global Pensions Assets Study 2021 by Willis Towers Watson. Asia Pacific pension funds beat their peers in asset value growth in 2019, according to a report on the world’s top 300 pension funds by the Thinking Ahead Institute. Assets under management (AUM) of the top 20 pension funds grew 8.1% year-on-year in 2019, led by a 10.6% growth in the assets of Asia Pacific funds. Read...

June 15, 2021
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May 2021
11May

Why China and east Asia’s ageing population threatens global Covid recovery

For many years China watchers have been concerned that its ageing population will slow economic growth, causing social as well as political problems. So today’s census data may be an alarm bell for leaders in Beijing. But it is not just China that is witnessing this trajectory. Most countries in east Asia, even without fertility control policies such as China’s one-child or two-child policies, share the same predicament: how to continue economic growth while encouraging people to have more children? This...

May 11, 2021
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06May

Does it Matter to be Informal? Type of employment and political opinions in the MENA region

By Anil Duman Informal activities are highly persistent in developing countries, and their economic effects are widely studied in the literature. Yet, political consequences of informality are relatively an understudied topic and big chunk of the existing work does not offer systematic examination of how informal sector participation shape preferences and attitudes. Our paper contributes to the literature by focusing on Arab countries that have very stable and large size of informal sectors in the world. Additionally, we take into...

May 6, 2021
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April 2021
19Apr

Asia Is Increasing Its ESG Asset Appetite

Sustainability funds explode onto the global financial scene, and the momentum is not stopping anytime soon. JPMorgan’s head of environmental, social, and governance research Elaine Wu pointed out that sustainability funds doubled in 2020, and the market segment could double again in Asia, CNBC reports. Read also Fintech but make it eco-friendly. “We’ve seen the amount of asset under management dedicated to ESG investing double in the last year,” Wu told CNBC. “We expect that to double again, in Asia, for the coming...

April 19, 2021
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01Apr

Mercer commits to net zero by 2050 in UK, Europe and Asia

Mercer has targeted net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 for UK, European and Asian clients with discretionary portfolios and the majority of its multi-client, multi asset funds domiciled in Ireland. The company said this represented a combined total of £31.5bn in assets under management as of 31 December 2020, adding that it would seek to achieve its net-zero goal by reducing portfolio relative carbon emissions by at least 45 per cent from 2019 baseline levels by 2030. Following the creation of a...

April 1, 2021
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March 2021
05Mar

Labour Market and Technological Development in Central Asia

By Roman Mogilevskii This paper discusses the current situation in the labour markets of the economies of Central Asia and considers the options available to use labour market policies to support the technological development of these economies. It analyses contemporary issues in the labour markets of these countries including the labour migration, informality, inequality, and financing of pensions through the taxation of labour. The paper provides recommendations for the modification of labour market policies to promote the economic diversification and...

March 5, 2021
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February 2021
08Feb

Asia needs pension reforms for sustainable growth

ASIA is in a good starting position to thrive during the 2020s as it weathered the pandemic crisis in relatively good shape. Allianz SE notes while economic activity in the region declined by less than 2% in 2020, gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by more than 4% at the global level and by almost 8% in Latin America. The main reasons for Asia’s resilience, the multinational insurance group says, is robust growth of 2.3% in China, the only big economy of...

February 8, 2021
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