Pundits keep a close watch on the U.S. Federal Reserve as it meets to raise interest rates after seven years of effectively zero rates. Yet the reality is that many Americans know little about interest rates, and much less about the implications of a rate hike for their finances! This was one key finding from the recently released S&P Global FinLit Survey, gathered with the support of McGraw Hill Financial.…Read More
RetireSecure Blog
The Pension Research Council’s curated blog features insights from the industry’s leading professionals.
Views of our Guest Bloggers are theirs alone, and not of the Pension Research Council, the Wharton School, or the University of Pennsylvania.
Fixing The Weakest Link: Strengthening Retirement Security By Default
One drawback of defined contribution (DC) retirement plans is that they place the burden of making financial decisions on participants who are often ill equipped for the task. This has contributed to widespread concerns about retirement security. Will people have enough savings when they leave the workforce to afford a comfortable retirement? Will they then draw on their nest eggs efficiently while in retirement, enabling them to avoid financial ruin over an uncertain lifetime?…Read More
Where Are The Screaming Actuaries?
When Detroit went bankrupt in 2013, estimates of pension shortfalls multiplied overnight. The city’s regular actuarial firm had reported pension underfunding at $600 million. A special study performed by a second actuarial firm showed underfunding of $3.5 billion.…Read More
What The U.S. Can Learn From Chile’s Retirement System
Chile provides a safety net for those who fall into poverty in old age, but it’s still an imperfect pension system that needs work.
Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) retirement programs in the U.S. and many European countries are struggling to remain solvent in the face of an aging population, fewer workers, and a shortfall in private savings. A different approach would strengthen individual savings accounts by requiring workers to contribute out of pre-tax income, combined with a redistributive means-tested safety net for those who fall into poverty in old age.…Read More
Chile’s Fabled Retirement System: Why Fix It?
Since its launch 35 years ago, Chile’s retirement system has been hailed as “best in class” by pension experts near and far. The country’s fabled individual and privately-managed accounts include around 10 million affiliates, hold $160 billion in investments, and pay retirement benefits to over a million retirees. So why did President Michelle Bachelet establish a Pension Reform Commission that just delivered to her 58 specific reforms and three comprehensive proposals to overhaul remodel Chile’s retirement system?…Read More
DOL Rule Aside, Annuity Market Will Have To Change to Achieve Relevance
With an aging population and a declining portion of Americans who are covered by a pension, the annuity market should be stepping in to fill the gap. But the reality is much different. Luckily, technology is making annuities easier for insurers to sell and a better value for consumers.…Read More
Unfunded Pension Debts of U.S. States Still Exceed $3 Trillion
It’s well-known that there’s a huge financial hole in state-sponsored retirement plans for public employees, a hole that states will eventually have to fill with tax increases and spending cuts.
There is, however, still considerable debate as to the size of this government debt owed to public employees. In July 2015, the Pew Charitable Trusts released their latest issue brief, reporting that as of 2013, the nation’s state-run retirement systems had a $968 billion funding gap GPS +1.75%, not far from the “Trillion Dollar Gap” they reported in 2010.…Read More
Why Pensions Should Invest Like Pensions: It’s All About Liabilities, And Some Policy Thoughts
What is a pension? Put simply, a pension is a vehicle to provide deferred compensation to employees (and usually their partners) in retirement. Properly managed, a pension must cover its liabilities as these become payable.…Read More
Target Date Funds: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown
Target Date Funds, which automatically diversify, adjust and rebalance retirement saving allocations over very long periods of time, are among the most successful individual investing products of the past decade. Initially introduced in 1994, target date funds (TDFs) really took off after the U.S. Pension Protection Act of 2006 allowed defined contribution (DC) pension plans to use them as a default option for plan participants. Assets in TDFs rose from a total of $100 billion in assets in 2005 to over $700 billion in 2015, and more than 60% of new DC pension contributions are now flowing into these funds. At least 36 mutual fund companies offer TDFs to pension plans, and a growing part of the pension consulting business consists of helping pension plan sponsors to “customize” their TDFs.…Read More
How Financial Ignorance Can Ruin Retirement
There are compelling reasons to be worried about retirement preparedness. My work with Olivia S. Mitchell of Wharton’s Pension Research Council has found that only a minority of individuals gives any thought to retirement, even when people are only 10 to 15 years away from it. Planning can make the difference between security versus fragility in retirement. Our research shows that those who plan end up with double or triple the wealth of those who do not.…Read More