May 2020
07May

Staggering £19bn left languishing in unclaimed pension pots

Insurance association will work with UK government to ensure people ‘are reconnected’ with assets Many Brits are not contacting their pension provider when they move house. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) surveyed 2,000 UK adults and estimated that there are around 1.6 million pension pots worth £19.4bn ($24.2bn, €22.5bn) unclaimed. This is the equivalent of nearly £13,000 per pension pot. The survey comes several years after the government predicted that there could be as many as 50 million dormant and lost pensions by...

May 7, 2020
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01May

An Equilibrium Theory of Retirement Plan Design

By Ryan Bubb and Patrick L. Warren We develop an equilibrium theory of employer-sponsored retirement plan design using a behavioral contract theory approach. The operation of the labor market results in retirement plans that generally cater to, rather than correct, workers' mistakes. Our theory provides new explanations for a range of facts about retirement plan design, including the use of employer matching contributions and the use of default contribution rates in automatic enrollment plans that lower many workers' savings....

May 1, 2020
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April 2020

28Apr

Australian Disability pensioners fight for COVID-19 supplement

Disability pensioners claim they have been discriminated against by the federal government in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, with one young Sydney man saying he is on the verge of homelessness. A coalition of advocacy groups are demanding the government include people receiving the disability support pension on the fortnightly $550 COVID-19 supplement following the exclusion of disabled people and their carers, despite welfare recipients such as those on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and Austudy being eligible. Brendan Brest, 22, who...

April 28, 2020
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27Apr

Asian Pensions Under Pressure on Early Withdrawals

The trade-off between the needs of today and the desires of tomorrow is challenging the retirement savings systems in Asia as Covid-19 forces early withdrawals. Retirement schemes in Asia could face funding shortfalls after pension systems in Australia, South Korea and Malaysia have allowed early withdrawals, while others in the region are under pressure to follow suit. Read also South Africa: The Rules Around Pensions in a Time of Mass Job Losses The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is causing as yet untold damage...

April 27, 2020
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27Apr

Suspended UK pension contributions could total £1bn

Up to £1bn in pension contributions could be suspended this year as businesses strike deals with retirement scheme trustees to keep afloat during the Covid-19 crisis. The estimate emerged from a Financial Times survey of professional services companies advising more than half of the 5,500 employers backing “defined benefit” pension schemes in the UK. A lockdown of the nation’s non-essential businesses and households has left many companies facing steep reductions in revenues and a subsequent cash crisis, resulting in interventions by...

April 27, 2020
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March 2020

05Mar

UK. Record Numbers Saving into Workplace Pensions

More than three-quarters of British employees are now members of a workplace pension scheme, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics. And for the first time, occupational defined contribution (DC) pensions have overtaken all other types of pension, including defined benefit (DB) or final salary schemes. The proportion of employees in a workplace pension hit 77%, the highest since comparable records began in 1997 – it marks a huge advance on the 47% in these schemes...

March 5, 2020
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February 2020
13Feb

Gig economy sucking super savings dry

By  Ally Selby  It's causing everyday Aussies to retire with much less, forcing the country's taxpayers to carry the added costs, according to a Treasury submission by the Actuaries Institute. I n a paper submitted to the Treasury's Retirement Income Review Panel, the Institute warned of the new risks to Australia's superannuation system. "The gig economy... creates a new set of problems with respect to the superannuation guarantee (SG) system," it said. "It provides people with different types of jobs...

February 13, 2020
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07Feb

Demography and Provisions for Retirement – the Pension Composition, a Behavioral Approach

By B.M.S. van Praag, J. Hop Pensions may be provided for in a modern society by a mix of several methods, namely by voluntary individual savings, mandatory fully-funded occupational pension systems, mandatory social security financed by pay-as-you-go, and old-fashioned hoarding in cash. Here, we call the specific mixture of the four systems the pension composition. We assume that individual workers decide on their own individual savings, that the fully-funded occupational system is decided upon by the age cohort of...

February 7, 2020
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January 2020

31Jan

28% of Americans in Their 60s Are Extremely Short on Retirement Savings

Though there's no magic savings number that guarantees financial security during retirement, as a good rule of thumb, it's smart to close out your career with about 10 times your ending salary socked away. The reason? Social Security will only replace about 40% of the income you're used to if you're an average earner. If you're a higher earner, it will replace even less. Meanwhile, most seniors need considerably more than 40% of their former paycheck to stay afloat...

January 31, 2020
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December 2019

27Dec

Indians Fear Running Out of Funds in Retirement

It is said that money can’t buy happiness but Indian earners beg to differ. Recently released Standard Chartered Wealth Expectancy Report 2019 shows that as much as 77 per cent of the 1,000 Indian respondents consider money essential to their happiness. In fact, wealth is so important that many Indian earners or wealth creators, as the report calls them, are anxious about their financial future. The survey was conducted in 10 countries across Asia, Africa and Middle East, among...

December 27, 2019
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