May 2024
20May

South Africa. New law enables pension fund members to access their savings

Pension fund members are set to access a third of their pensions within the next four months. The National Assembly unanimously approved the Pension Fund Amendment Bill after it was sent back for concurrence by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) with technical amendments. The bill, introduced by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in January, provides for a “two-pots” system that divides pension contributions into two separate pots: a savings pot and a retirement pot, with effect from September. It proposes that retirement...

May 20, 2024
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April 2024
12Apr

Peru Passes Bill Allowing for $7 Billion in Pension Withdrawals

Peru’s Congress overwhelmingly approved a bill late Thursday allowing workers to tap their retirement accounts, which authorities estimate could lead to $7 billion in withdrawals. The bill was approved with the vote of 95 lawmakers out of 106 in attendance, despite government opposition. The government could veto the bill, but that is likely only to delay its implementation as congress can easily override it. Lawmakers have repeatedly targeted Peru’s vilified private pension system since the pandemic, saying the system has failed...

April 12, 2024
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February 2024
29Feb

US. More People Tapping Retirement Plans for Emergency Expenses

Retirement accounts are designed to provide financial security for the future, but a growing number of Americans are using them to pay for emergencies today. “We’ve been seeing a steady increase in early withdrawals over the last five years or so,” says Kirsten Hunter Peterson, vice president of thought leadership at Fidelity Investments, one of the largest providers of retirement plans. According to company data, the number of Fidelity plan participants who took a hardship withdrawal more than tripled from...

February 29, 2024
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December 2023
08Dec

Money Illusion in Retirement Savings with a Minimum Guarantee

By Catherine Donnelly, Gaurav Khemka & William Lim We investigate the impact of money illusion on the investment strategy and retirement outcomes of pre-retirees. Money illusion refers to the tendency of individuals to overlook the effects of inflation and focus on nominal rather than real terms. We solve and compare the optimal investment strategies for a pre-retiree who exhibits money illusion and aims to maximize the expected power utility of wealth at retirement, subject to a minimum guarantee constraint. While...

December 8, 2023
Articles, Pension Management, , ,
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June 2023
09Jun

The Effect of Defined Benefit Pensions on Income Survivability and ‘Safe’ Withdrawal Rates in Retirement

By Alan Stocker  Income from a Defined Benefit (DB) pension with various levels of inflation protection (no protection, and inflation caps of 2.5% and 5%) was combined with the income from an investment portfolio to provide a total required income, IR that was constant in inflation adjusted terms. Results of backtesting are presented for retirees in the UK and USA using historical asset returns and inflation. For a value of IR close to the maximum safe withdrawal rate (MSWR) for...

June 9, 2023
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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May 2023
30May

Early pension bonanza hits Zambia’s finances

Zambia’s decision to allow citizens to cash out part of their pensions early is having an unintended consequence: it’s hitting a key source of government financing as the squeeze from a long-delayed debt restructuring continues to tighten. New legislation enabling people to access 20% of their pension savings has seen the National Pension Scheme Authority, or Napsa, so far pay out 5.8 billion kwacha ($300 million) since it was signed into law April 17, spokesman Cephas Sinyangwe said on state...

May 30, 2023
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April 2023
05Apr

How America Saves 2022

By Vanguard Over the past decade, retirement plan sponsors have increasingly turned to automatic solutions to influence employee retirement saving behavior. As a result, plan participation rates have increased, automatic enrollment designs have become stronger, and participant portfolio construction has continued to improve with more age-appropriate asset mixes and less extreme equity allocations. During 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact many parts of the economy. While it pushed to recover, the economy faced prominent headwinds that stoked several forms of...

April 5, 2023
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March 2023
24Mar

COVID-19 Private Pension Withdrawals and Unemployment Tenures

By Tristram Sainsbury, Robert V. Breunig & Timothy Watson This is the first study to evaluate the effects of early pension withdrawal policies on tenures on unemployment payments in the COVID-19 context. We use a novel set of linked whole-of-population administrative records to examine more than half-a-million Australians who found themselves newly on an unemployment payment in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate that receiving a lump sum of up to A$10,000 from superannuation accounts at the...

March 24, 2023
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February 2023
23Feb

Australia plans to limit early access to retirement funds, cut tax breaks

Australia's centre-left government said on Thursday it would push ahead with plans to change superannuation rules, including restricting early access to funds until retirement and limiting tax breaks for high-earners. The Labor government earlier this week launched a consultation on reforming superannuation - or retirement fund - saying it wanted the A$3.3 trillion ($2.3 trillion) pension system to become sustainable and equitable in the face of mounting pressure on the federal budget. "We are not trying to revolutionise the system, but...

February 23, 2023
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08Feb

Pension Withdrawals Drain Savings in Chile and Peru

By Richard Francis, Kelli Bissett-Tom & Christopher Dychala Peru, Chile and Bolivia have allowed early withdrawals from their funds as a source of relief for households and to support recoveries during the pandemic and the global price shock. But these have had negative financial and confidence ramifications, contributing to downgrades of Peru in 2021 and Chile in 2020. Longstanding private pension funds have been important supports for sovereign creditworthiness where they exist in Latin America. Pension fund assets have supported sovereign...

February 8, 2023
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