February 2021
24Feb

Puerto Rico governor rejects key deal with creditors to reduce debt due to pension cuts

Puerto Rico’s governor announced Tuesday that a federal control board reached a key deal that would reduce the U.S. territory’s overall debt by nearly 80 percent, but that his administration is rejecting it because it would require cuts to the island’s crumbling public pension system. The impasse between the governor and a board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances threatens to throw into limbo attempts to end a bankruptcy-like process for a government that six years ago declared unpayable its more...

February 24, 2021
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15Feb

Ireland. Pensions timebomb waiting to go off unless we take action now

As we battle our way through the Covid-19 pandemic the Government has had to deal with an extraordinary crisis with no advance warning or time for preparation. However, there is another major issue that has been gathering pace for some time and which also affects everyone in this country – and that is the “pension crisis”. In this case the Government has had time to plan, be prepared and act and that time is now. Luckily, much of the work...

February 15, 2021
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12Feb

US. House Includes Pension Reform Plan in COVID-19 Relief Bill

The House Ways and Means Committee has included a pension reform provision in a COVID-19 relief bill that would create a special financial assistance program to help multiemployer pension plans and extend amortization periods for single-employer plans. Read also US. AIG to pay New York $12M for unlicensed pension risk transfer business The Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of 2021, which is included in the bill, would create a special financial assistance program under which cash payments would be...

February 12, 2021
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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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January 2021

28Jan

Peru Congress Edges Closer to Giving State Control Over Pensions

A Peruvian congressional committee approved a bill to overhaul the country’s pension system, triggering warnings from the fund-management industry that the government will get control of billions of dollars of private savings. Read also Coronavirus throwing retirement systems into a deepening hole Lawmakers on the pension reform committee voted 6-2 in favor of legislation late Tuesday that seeks to replace the existing private and public pension plans with an integrated, government-run system. The bill will now be sent to the...

January 28, 2021
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19Jan

China:Pension system reform seen as imperative

The structural reform of China's pension system is imperative, and the country's aging population will be propelling an increase in demand for pension funds to be allocated to investments with sustainable returns and alternative solutions that provide long-term benefits, according to Ms Dong Mei, a partner and the head of Aged Care in KPMG China. In an article for China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily, she points to several overarching trends affecting the development of China's...

January 19, 2021
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14Jan

Pension Reform Primer : Issues, Challenges, Options and Arguments in Pension Reform

By World Bank The World Bank Pension Reform Primer aims to provide a comprehensive toolkit for policy makers on designing and implementing pension reform. It is based on continuously updated information from countries that have introduced reforms emphasizing the role of privately-managed individual retirement accounts. Their experience offers a number of useful lessons for policy makers elsewhere. The Bank set out a conceptual framework for fundamental pension reform in "Averting the Old Age Crisis: Policies to Protect the Old...

January 14, 2021
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05Jan

South Africa. Long-awaited pension reforms deal with only half of the problem

Many retiring members of provident funds have spent most of the lump sum on costs of living rather than investing it prudently to ensure a lasting income stream. They are forced to rely on the old age pension offered by the state. But upcoming retirement reforms to rectify the situation might only be half of the solution. State pensions essentially defeat the government’s purpose in offering tax incentives to members of pension funds – not provident funds –  during their...

January 5, 2021
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January 2021
01Jan

Disability pensions and social security reform : analysis of the Latin American experience

By Grushka, Carlos O. & Demarco, Gustavo This paper describes the disability pension arrangements prevailing in ten Latin American countries that reformed their pension systems. The analysis is limited to the topic of disability pensions, without attempting to evaluate other critical aspects such as the available infrastructure: handicapped access generally (ramps, blind cues), medical and nursing support, home care, and so on. The relative significance of disability pensions is highly dependant on these factors and, however, they are really limited...

January 1, 2021
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01Jan

Retirement Savings in Mena

By Gustavo Demarco Public pensions are important in MENA, but their role as institutional investors remains uncertain in view of the sustainability problems that pension schemes are facing due to the over generosity of their promises. In addition to the gradual loss of reserves, portfolios are not very diversified and this, in turn, reveals a low level of professional management probably com bined with an absence of autonomy in the asset allocation process. An exception to this rule is the...

January 1, 2021
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