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March 2023

UK. New figures show Gender Pension Gap remains stubbornly high

New statistics from trade union, Prospect, provide their latest estimate of the Gender Pensions Gap. They put the gap at 40.5% for 2020-21, essentially unchanged since the figure was first estimated half a decade ago. This is significantly more than the gender pay gap, and represents an average annual £7,100 shortfall. The latest figures show that despite an increased focus on the gap, current government policies are failing to provide any improvement. This has led Prospect to warn of a “ticking...

Pension Provision in Thailand

By Robert Palacios & Himanshi Jain This report documents the current state of pension provision in Thailand and options for reform that would increase the adequacy and sustainability of the pension system. While the focus here is on income support, the welfare of the elderly depends on many other government policies ranging from labor market policies to aged care and health services. It is also important to assess the pension system in terms of its broader impact on fiscal sustainability...

February 2023

Social partner model spreads to small, medium-sized firms in Germany

Social partner model spreads to small, medium-sized firms in Germany The social partner model offering pure defined contribution (DC) plans is spreading mostly among small and medium-sized firms in the chemical sector in Germany, attracting employees who did not show interest in occupational pensions in the past. The German Federation of Chemical Employers’ Associations (BAVC), the social partner that started one of the first pure DC schemes in Germany, is currently seeing demand for social partner models for pensions in the...

U.S. A Retirement Income Distribution Plan Is as Critical as Saving

The majority of your life is spent in accumulation mode — earning a steady income and putting money aside for things like retirement, savings, your child’s education or a dream vacation home. After years of investing and saving, it is critical to shift your mindset out of accumulation mode and into distribution, or decumulation, mode when retirement nears. Making that mental shift is difficult for most, but having a comprehensive wealth plan that includes a retirement income distribution strategy...

January 2023

Financial regret at older ages and longevity awareness

By Abigail Hurwitz & Olivia S. Mitchell Older people often express regret about financial decisions made earlier in life that left them susceptible to old-age insecurity. Prior work has explored one outcome, saving regret, or peoples’ expressed wish that they had saved more earlier in life. The present paper extends attention to five additional areas regarding financial decisions, examining whether older Americans also regret not having insured better, claimed benefits and quit working too early, and becoming financially dependent on...

Pension plan sponsors say their plans are risk averse (but their designs say otherwise)

A new survey from Vanguard finds that sponsors of pension plans say they value lower-risk plans, but don’t always succeed in avoiding risk in their plan design. The report suggests that sponsors of plans may have trouble understanding the level of risk they are taking. The survey also found a continuation of the trend showing that pension plan sponsors are continuing to adjust their plans in ways designed to reduce liability and risk. The new report is the fifth in...

German government to set up foundation with up to €150bn for first-pillar pension reform

The German government plans to build a foundation under public law called Stiftung Generationenkapital to manage up to €150bn in assets in the long term for an equity fund to turn the first-pillar pension system into a partially funded platform based on the Aktienrente concept. The government will start to build the equity pension fund this year with starting capital worth €10bn, setting up a foundation that will “be anchored in law and independent from politics” to stabilise the first-pillar...

Long-Term Real Dynamic Investment Planning

By Russell J. Gerrard, Munir Hiabu, Jens Perch Nielsen & Peter Vodička When long-term savers plan for retirement they need to know their investment prospects in terms of real income (Merton, 2014). While inflation has traditionally been considered as a complication in financial analysis and financial practise, we obtain enhanced predictability and model fit if the real returns are targeted in conjunction with earnings-by-price minus inflation as predictor. For this latter case, we propose an investment strategy of updating the...

CDC schemes would have ‘weathered’ market turmoil

Aon said market turbulence would not have had an adverse impact on members’ benefits A ‘well-designed’ collective defined contribution (CDC) scheme would have withstood recent market turmoil, according to Aon. In an update to the firm's Collective DC in adverse markets paper, originally published in October 2020, Aon said an efficient CDC scheme would have been able to resist the financial turbulence in the markets throughout 2021 and 2022, without having a negative impact on members' benefits or their retirement outcomes....

US. Financial Planning for Retirement: It’s More Accessible, but Be Careful

I’ve been writing and researching articles on finance and money for most of my career, and covering retirement for the past 15 years. But my wife and I haven’t picked a stock or mutual fund for our own retirement accounts since the late 1990s, or written our own retirement plan. For that, we rely on a financial planner. Hiring a planner is one of the smartest financial moves we have made. This type of advice was once a subset of...