September 2020

04Sep

How to Improve Mobile Money Service Usage and Adoption by Nigerians in the Era of COVID-19

By Joseph E Tonuchi The paper aims to investigate how to improve mobile money service adoption and usage by Nigerians during the era of COVID-19 by examining the challenges faced by mobile money users in Nigeria. The study used a mixed method to sample 300 targeted informal sector operators offline using questionnaires and 200 respondents online (ardent digital products users) using Google form. In reaching the targeted online sample, the study distributed the google form through social media while...

September 4, 2020
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04Sep

Disruptive fintech is our best bet to economic recovery post COVID-19

History has taught us that times of crisis drive demand for technological advancement. Those that leverage innovative technology, to tackle challenges and turn them into opportunities, are often the most successful in helping society to recover. Earlier this year, when the novel coronavirus sparked a global pandemic, physical distancing was enforced around the world to limit the spread of infection. This led to a surge in remote working and a spike in unemployment, sparking technological innovation within a number...

September 4, 2020
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03Sep

Pensions Need a ‘Safety Valve,’ Says JPMorgan

Pensions entered the Covid-19 pandemic significantly exposed to corporate credit risk, relying on a traditional investment strategy that may be heading for failure, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s asset management group. They’ve been hedging the volatility of their pension liabilities by taking on “a very concentrated exposure to corporate credit,” Jared Gross, the head of institutional portfolio strategy at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said in a phone interview. Largely holding corporate bonds at risk of being downgraded...

September 3, 2020
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03Sep

US. COVID-19 economy pushing workers into early, involuntary retirement

The COVID-19 pandemic may have pushed millions of older workers out of the workforce prematurely. A report published earlier this month from the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA) at The New School showed that 2.8 million older workers have left their jobs since March — and ongoing economic turmoil coupled with poor health could make it difficult to resume their career elsewhere. Some may have already given up. Per the report, 38% of unemployed older employees stopped...

September 3, 2020
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03Sep

Europe needs a fully fledged capital markets union – now more than ever

The capital markets union (CMU) is one of the cornerstones of the euro area's financial architecture. But progress in developing it has been slow. Since the agreement on establishing CMU in 2015, many subprojects have been launched, and some completed, but European capital markets are still far from being fully integrated. Despite the fact that the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has made CMU more important than ever, progress has unfortunately slowed, notwithstanding the substantial headway made on the fiscal side...

September 3, 2020
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02Sep

How the coronavirus pandemic is deepening Asia’s pension crisis

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to overwhelm economies in Asia, putting an unprecedented number of jobs on the line, another crisis is brewing in the backdrop – one that’s likely to hit millions of people years down the road. Along with the strain on their health and financial well-being, the pandemic threatens to derail Asians’ retirement security and Asia’s multitrillion-dollar pension systems, which already faced major challenges pre-Covid-19. As early as 2017, the World Economic Forum warned that a...

September 2, 2020
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August 2020

28Aug

Job and Wage Losses in Informal Sector due to the COVID-19 Lockdown Measures in India

By Xavier Estupinan, Mohit Sharma This paper estimates the job and wage losses of workers, using the lens of informality, due to lockdown measures undertaken by the Government of India to tackle the spread of COVID-19. It focuses on the first two lockdowns when containment measures in India were most stringent in the world. We estimate that 104 million and 69.4 million informally employed workers were at risk of job loss in Lockdown 1.0 and Lockdown 2.0 respectively. Informal...

August 28, 2020
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28Aug

COVID-19 Infections, Labour Market Shocks, and Subjective Well-Being

By Ferdi Botha, John P. Haisken-DeNew This is the first paper to present novel findings on how simultaneously (a) labour market shocks and (b) infections in the household, directly due to COVID-19, have impacted on life satisfaction and domain satisfactions. Using data from a world-wide online survey of almost 5,700 respondents across six countries, we estimate the associations of COVID-19-related labour market shocks and COVID-19 infection with life satisfaction and a range of domain satisfactions. Directly due to COVID-19,...

August 28, 2020
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26Aug

After Private Pensions, Peru’s Congress Turns to Public Funds for COVID-19 Relief

Peru's Congress approved a law on Tuesday that allows citizens to partially draw down their contributions to the state pension fund, a few months after doing the same with the private system and despite fierce opposition from the government. Read also What The Pandemic Has Revealed About Retirement Plans With 106 votes in favor, three against and 15 abstentions, the fractured, opposition-dominated chamber gave the go-ahead for Social Security Office (ONP) affiliates to withdraw up to $4,300 ($1,200) to mitigate...

August 26, 2020
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26Aug

US. A$1.6 Trillion Pension Fund Gap – Is Infrastructure Investment The Answer?

The U.S. is a superpower in the pension fund world, controlling more than 50% of global assets, and yet a recent Financial Times article identified a $1.6 trillion dollar funding gap as a grave threat to the U.S. economy. Read also US. The Future for ESG Investing in Retirement Plans For the last 15 years, as Canadian and Australian pension funds have returned on average nearly 5% per year, and often much more, their U.S. counterparts have averaged returns of...

August 26, 2020
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