July 2024
09Jul

US. Employer group urges Congress to increase retirement plan awareness for gig workers

In response to a request for information on June 5 from Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, for ways to allow gig workers access to retirement benefits, the American Benefits Council (ABC) has responded. The employer group sent a letter, including suggestions introduced in the SECURE 2.0. legislation, as well as pooled employers plans (PEPs) established by Congress. "The vast majority of independent workers prefer alternative work arrangements to traditional...

July 9, 2024
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09Jul

US. Retirement Readiness Confidence Robust

Confidence in financial readiness to retire is robust, despite the vagaries of inflation and other economic factors and the after-effects of the pandemic.  And that confidence is especially attuned to participating in a retirement plan. The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) in its 2024 Retirement Confidence Survey reports much strong confidence. However, it’s more than twice as high among those with retirement plan coverage than among those who lack it. Among respondents who are covered by a retirement plan, 77% of...

July 9, 2024
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08Jul

America’s pension system gets C+ rating, falling behind other countries

America’s pension system is failing to make the grade, according to a recent report from the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. “The United States’ pension system consistently ranks below other comparable countries, getting a barely passing grade of C+ in both the 2022 and 2023 Melbourne Mercer Pension Index rankings,” according to SCEPA. Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands each scored grades of B+ or higher. The difference between the United States and those other countries is that mandatory contributions and simple pension management...

July 8, 2024
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05Jul

Retirement Benefit Distributions for California Educators

By Robert L. Clark, Denis Pelletier & Beth Ritter Distribution choices by individuals retiring from CalSTRS are examined for participants that retired between 2016 and 2023. Women are much more likely to select a member-only annuity while a larger proportion of men select a J&S annuity that provide survivor benefits. Being married is a dominant factor in the selection of J&S annuities. Greater final annual salary, older ages at retirement, and more years of service are associated with a greater probability of choosing...

July 5, 2024
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05Jul

Changing Retirement Incentives and Retirement in the US

By Courtney Coile Employment rates of older Americans have been rising since the 1990s. While the US is fairly unique among advanced economies in not experiencing any large-scale pension reforms in recent decades, there have been multiple changes to Social Security policy that have strengthened the incentive to work at older ages. This study builds on prior work documenting the changes in retirement incentives over time to explore the effect of these changes on retirement behavior, using over two decades...

July 5, 2024
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05Jul

Judge throws out anti-ESG lawsuit against New York City pension funds

A New York state judge has thrown out a lawsuit against three of the five pensions funds in the $264.3 billion NYC Retirement System, saying New York State Supreme Court Judge Andrea Masley ruled July 2 that she dismissed the complaint because “plaintiffs here have not, and will not, suffer any monetary losses based upon defendants’ investment decisions.” Plaintiffs contended the pension funds' investment decisions would impair their ability to provide long-term benefits for retirees, an allegation Masley wrote was “speculative.” The judge supported...

July 5, 2024
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04Jul

United States: US court vacates the SEC Private Fund Adviser rule

On 5 June 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated the Private Fund Adviser rule (“Rule“) in its entirety on the grounds that the SEC, in enacting the Rule, had exceeded its statutory authority. The Rule was adopted by the SEC in August 2023 and would have fundamentally changed the regulatory landscape for private equity funds and their investors. The outcome was somewhat unexpected as in oral arguments the petitioners only directly challenged three...

July 4, 2024
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02Jul

US. It’s time for Gen X–ers nearing 60 to give their retirement plans a reality check

The oldest members of Generation X — that generation born between 1965 and 1980 and known for its irreverence, sarcasm and indifference — are hitting 59½ and eligible to start withdrawing money from retirement accounts without penalty. But should they be touching their nest eggs so soon? As the first do-it-yourself generation funding retirement largely without private pension plans, many members of Gen X graduated college or high school during a recession. They got their first jobs when 401(k)s were...

July 2, 2024
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01Jul

US. CalPERS breaks with its past

Over the past year, the US’s largest public pension system, CalPERS, has been making some interesting moves. CalPERS has been making commitments to private equity funds much smaller in size than it has traditionally targeted, including growth-oriented and venture capital vehicles. Historically, CalPERS has built its private equity portfolio to reflect its own massive size – choosing large funds into which it could make sizable investments that gave it outsized influence on the GP and potential access to choice economics and...

July 1, 2024
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June 2024
28Jun

Retirement Guide For LGBTQ Americans

By John Schmidt & Benjamin Curry Heterosexual Americans have historically made more on average than their LGBTQ+ counterparts. But some studies suggest that the income gap has disappeared. In recent years, gay men have been earning 10% more than straight men with similar education, experience, and job profiles. Same-sex married couples have a higher median household income than opposite-sex married couples, according to the U.S. Census Bureau data. But the issue is more nuanced than these broad statistics suggest. Source Forbes 

June 28, 2024
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