January 2024
10Jan

UK. Morningstar expects up to 300 funds to opt for sustainability label

Up to 300 funds are expected to assign themselves a sustainability label this year, as part of new rules from the UK’s financial regulator. In November, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) unveiled a labelling regime for investment products wishing to market themselves as considering environmental and social issues. It identifies four legitimate approaches, including targeting real-world impact and supporting companies that are transitioning to more sustainable practices. A report published today by research house Morningstar predicts that “about 300 UK open-...

January 10, 2024
News, ,
Read more...
10Jan

Why Retirement Gets Better With Annuities

Everyone aspires to have a steady source of income after retirement that replaces as much as possible of their pre-retirement earning. But for many people, one big challenge in saving for that goal is to find the right financial product that accommodates their specific requirements, such as when they want to retire or how much more they need over and above their Social Security benefits. A new research paper by experts at Wharton and elsewhere solves that challenge with a...

January 10, 2024
News, ,
Read more...

December 2023
15Dec

Annuities Are Back in Favour

"In an environment of high market volatility and high interest rates, life annuities are an option to consider again," says Spencer Look, director at the Morningstar Center of retirement and policy studies in Chicago. "Interest rates, he continues, are allowing annuity income levels not seen since the mid-2000s." The figures in Quebec confirm this, showing an increase of 17.7% between 2021 and 2022. Of the six main product categories listed in the 2022 Annual Report on Financial Institutions and Credit...

December 15, 2023
News, ,
Read more...
01Dec

Subjective survival beliefs and the life-cycle model

By Seung Yeon Jeong, Iqbal Owadally, Steven Haberman & Douglas Wright Evidence from panel surveys of households, collected over several years and in different countries, shows that people’s perception about their remaining lifetime deviates from actuarial data. This has consequences for consumption, savings and investment over an individual’s financial life cycle, and in particular for retirement planning and the purchase of annuities. We use data from the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances to estimate subjective survival probabilities at different ages....

December 1, 2023
Articles, Pension design, , ,
Read more...

November 2023
23Nov

The 4% Rule for Retirement Withdrawals Might Finally Be Safe to Use Again, Says Morningstar

There's been an ongoing debate about whether retirees should abandon the "4% rule" for withdrawals from retirement accounts, a retirement income rule of thumb for decades. The market volatility of recent years made that rule suspect for many new retirees, but a new study from Morningstar finds that the rule can still apply. What Is the 4% Rule? Created in 1994 by a financial planner named William Bengen, the 4% rule posits that retirees can make a well-structured retirement fund last 30 years...

November 23, 2023
News, ,
Read more...
03Nov

Aging, Healthcare System, and Interest Rates

By Reona Hagiwara Over the past few decades, the Japanese economy has experienced the widening gap between returns on liquid bonds and illiquid capital (i.e., the liquidity premium) due to a secular decline in the real interest rate and a slight increase in the capital return. This paper explores the role of the health or medical expenditure risk in the increase in the premium, using a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents that differ in health status and...

November 3, 2023
Aging, Articles, , , ,
Read more...

October 2023
27Oct

Time Consistency in Optimal Retirement Planning

By Frank Bosserhoff, An Chen & Manuel Rach We study time consistency in optimal consumption problems of annuities and tontines. We find the annuity problem to be time-consistent, hence delivering the same optimal consumption at each time. The tontine problem, however, is found to be time-inconsistent, opening the possibility for individuals to increase or decrease their overall expected utility by changing the ex ante fixed consumption profile. However, such an increase in the utility of the tontine cannot lead to...

October 27, 2023
Articles, Pension design, ,
Read more...
09Oct

Why we often struggle to pivot from saving to spending

Here's the retirement quandary for many Americans. They spend years building good financial habits so, if all goes well, they have sufficient funds by the end of their working years. Then, when it’s time to transition, they often struggle in the shift from saving to spending their nest egg. The no-stress years suddenly become the all-stress years. "It's disappointing to get to your first couple of years of retirement, and just constantly be stressed out about your income generation strategy from...

October 9, 2023
News, , ,
Read more...
05Oct

South Africa. Some pensioners are still queuing for hours for their grants

Pensioners still had to wait hours to collect their grants at some places in Cape Town, though on the whole the payments seemed to be going more smoothly. Last month, thousands of social grant beneficiaries did not receive their money on time due to a technical glitch with PostBank. When GroundUp arrived at noon on Tuesday, about 80 people were waiting at the Gatesville Post Office to receive their pension. Elizabeth Fredericks, 75, waited for five hours before receiving her grant. She arrived...

October 5, 2023
News, ,
Read more...
04Oct

US. SEC proposes changes for registered index-linked annuities

The SEC proposed rule amendments that would customize the registration form and disclosure requirements for registered index-linked annuities, also known as RILAs. The move comes after Congress passed a law in December directing the SEC to do so. "Given the complexity and growing popularity of RILAs, it is important that investors receive the information they need — in plain English — to make informed investment decisions," SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a news release Sept. 29. "Implementing Congress' mandate, today's...

October 4, 2023
News, ,
Read more...