January 2023
03Jan

UK. Industry criticises 2022 as an adverse year for pensions

Results from our last Pensions Buzz survey of 2022 revealed 54% of respondents felt the last 12 months have not been positive for the industry, against 36% who disagreed and 14% who voted don't know. Of the respondents who said 2022 had not been a positive year, several pointed to the liability-driven investment (LDI) crisis as a result of September's Mini Budget. One respondent said: "The LDI crisis was very damaging. Stock market has been volatile, pension valises have fallen and...

January 3, 2023
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02Jan

OECD says pension funds must take ‘extreme care’ with liquidity risks

Pension funds should be “extremely careful” when investing in illiquid assets, as rising interest rates and falling stock markets increase the likelihood of their having to access cash quickly, the OECD has warned. In the recent era of low interest rates, pension funds poured money into alternative investments, such as infrastructure projects and private equity, in an effort to escape the low yields available on government bonds. But such investments are typically illiquid, meaning the funds cannot quickly convert them...

January 2, 2023
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December 2022
30Dec

U.K. Altmann hits out at providers for pension positivity failure

Providers have failed to engage or enthuse millions of auto-enrolment customers with positive pension messages, undermining the policy by not explaining the advantages of pensions, Baroness Ros Altmann says. The campaigner and former pensions minister said that, rather than "constant negative messaging", people needed to know about the positives of pensions so they understand the free money they will have and higher benefit payments they could have if they keep paying in. Altmann's comments come as research by The Pensions Management Institute...

December 30, 2022
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27Dec

Inflation, war, rising interest rates posed steep challenges for investors in 2022

An inflationary environment that is anything but transitory, the volatility arising from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other geopolitical crises, and a bevy of controversies surrounding ESG investing dominated headlines this year, while the fall of Allianz Global Investors and an exceptionally busy regulatory year were also among Pensions & Investments' top 10 stories of 2022. The top story this year was inflation and the Federal Reserve's aggressive actions to curb it through multiple interest rate hikes. After more than...

December 27, 2022
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23Dec

Government Exempt Worker’s Pensions From Domestic Debt Exchange Program After Given A 7- Day Ultimatum

Government has succumbed to pressure from Organised Labour by exempting workers’ pensions from the recently launched Domestic Debt Exchange Programme. After a crunch meeting with Organised Labour on Thursday, December 22, the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, gave utmost assurances that pensions of all workers will be exempt from the Programme. The Programme, launched on Monday, December 5 and expected to take off next month, was announced as part of austerity measures to save the economy from collapse. By the Programme, government...

December 23, 2022
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22Dec

South Korea’s Corporate Retirement Pension Funds Jump 15.5% in 2021: Statistics Korea

South Korea's corporate retirement pension funds under management expanded 15.5% to 295 trillion won as of end-December 2021 from a year earlier, Yonhap News reported Monday, citing data compiled by Statistics Korea. A total of 425,000 firms in the country adopted the retirement pension funds scheme for their employees as of last year, marking a growth of 4% from 2020, according to the report. The corporate retirement pension program covered nearly 6.8 million workers in 2021, which accounted for 53.3%...

December 22, 2022
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22Dec

Ghana. Conduct stress test on pension funds -Think tank to government

The government has been urged to conduct a comprehensive stress test on the decision to include pension funds in the proposed domestic debt exchange programme (DEP). The test should be conducted by the Ministry of Finance (MoF), in collaboration with all stakeholders and debtors, as part of best practices required to reveal the possible implications of including pension funds in the programme. Contributing to the debate on the proposed involvement of pension funds in the DEP, the Executive Director, Africa Centre...

December 22, 2022
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Declining US Natural Interest Rate: Quantifying and Qualifying the Role of Pensions
20Dec

Declining US Natural Interest Rate: Quantifying and Qualifying the Role of Pensions

By: Jacopo Bonchi & Giacomo Caracciolo We develop a life-cycle model and calibrate it to the US economy to quantify and qualify the role of the public pension system for the past and future trend of the natural interest rate, the so-called r∗. Between 1970 and 2015, past pension reforms mitigated the secular decline in r∗, raising it by around 1%, mainly through the positive effect of a higher replacement rate. As regards the future, we simulate the demographic trends, expected...

December 20, 2022
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20Dec

Ghana labour unions call for strike over local debt swap

Ghana's main unions on Monday called for a nationwide strike from next week in protest against the inclusion of workers' pensions in a local debt swap programme as part of the terms for an IMF credit. A top cocoa and gold producer, Ghana has oil and gas reserves but its debt payments are high and its revenues weak. Like the rest of Africa, it has been hit by economic fallout from the global pandemic and the Ukraine war. Two weeks ago, the...

December 20, 2022
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08Dec

Can Investors Save the Planet? – NZAMI and Fiduciary Duty

By Tom Gosling & Iain MacNeil Asset manager signatories of the Net Zero Asset Manager Initiative, part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, have committed to investing in line with the Race to Zero goal of limiting global warming to 1.5oC with limited or no overshoot. Given that a recent report from United Nations Environment Programme says that there is “no credible pathway” in place to 1.5oC, we explore the implications for asset managers, as fiduciaries, of investing...

December 8, 2022
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