Praise for "Pension Revolution"

"When Keith Ambachtsheer puts his keen mind to work on a problem, watch out! Here he exposes today's fragile arrangements for the most serious social dilemma of our times--financing retirement. Then he provides a compelling and powerful set of solutions. His writings are essential reading for all who care about the future of American living standards."
--Peter Bernstein, founder and President, Peter L. Bernstein, Inc., and author of "Capital Ideas and Against the Gods"

"This book describes one of the most ingenious inventions in the history of mankind: pension funds offering credible promises about old-age income. It reads like a thriller: how can well-governed pension funds be created in an imperfect world in which mortals wrestle with foibles and moral shortcomings? One of the world's leading experts on pensions searches for the answer--and finds it."
--Lans Bovenberg, Scientific Director, Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging, and Retirement, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

""Pension Revolution" exposes the inadequacies of current pension systems and persuasively makes the case for the fundamental changes that are needed. It is essential reading for both the pension industry and policymakers."
--Elizabeth Bryan, Chair, Investment Committee, Unisuper Management PM Ltd, Australia

"Most analyses of complicated issues deal with complexity by simplifying or only looking at one piece-part, and, in doing so, provide limited value. In stark contrast, Keith Ambachtsheer boldly wades into the complexity in "Pension Revolution" to come up with a valuable integrative solution. He is a most welcome revolutionary!"
--RogerMartin, Dean, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Canada

"We have known Keith for over ten years, and consistently over that time, he has constructively and comprehensively challenged conventional wisdom. He has done this so effectively that many of his initial thoughts have now become universally accepted norms. Such is his energy however that he continues to push the boundaries of pension and investment thinking."
--Peter Moon, Chief Investment Officer, Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd, UK

""Pension Revolution" not only explains the shortcomings of the existing pension system and the underlying design features that have resulted in the current pension upheaval. It also offers thoughtful and creative suggestions for prospective pension design. A must-read for anyone interested in the future of retirement finance."
--James Poterba, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the TIAA-CREF Board of Trustees

Pension funds have come to play an increasingly important role within the new economy. According to Statistics Canada, in 2006, trusteed pension funds in Canada had $836 billion of assets and represented the savings of 4.6 million Canadian workers. Pensions at Work is a unique collection of papers that uses a labour perspective to deal with the socially responsible investment of pension funds. Featuring leading Canadian and international scholars, it builds on existing scholarship on socially responsible investment and on the growing interest of the Canadian labour movement in joint trusteeship. What is unique about this collection is that it synthesizes three distinct themes - socially responsible investment, pension funds, and labour studies. The contributors address an array of critical issues such as gaps in the education of union trustees of pension funds, the impact of human capital criteria on shareholder returns, the influence of corporate engagement upon corporate performance, and the nature of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Although the essays in Pensions at Work all address the nexus between socially responsible investment, pension funds, and unions, each looks at a particular manifestation of that relationship through a different disciplinary lens. This collection moves the discussion to pension funds in which union representatives are also trustees, a relatively new approach that will be of great interest to institutional investors, the labour movement, and instructors in labour studies programs.

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Financial market developments over the past decade have undermined what was once thought to be conventional wisdom about saving, investment, and retirement spending. How Persistent Low Returns Will Shape Saving and Retirement explores how the weak capital market performance predicted for the next several years will shape pension saving, investment, and decumulation plans. Academics, policymakers, and industry leaders debate alternative strategies to cope with these challenges globally, as economic growth remains slow and low returns become the 'new normal.' This volume includes contributions from plan sponsors, benefit specialists, actuaries, academics, regulators, and others working to design resilient pensions for the next decades. Together, they identify several new tools for retirement savers and pension managers.

WINNER of Business Book Awards 2019 "Exceptional Book by a Woman" Women - your financial future is in your hands - you can create it. Power Property Investing for Women is for any woman who wants to control their financial future. There is a property investing strategy for everyone regardless of financial or personal circumstances. Award-winning Property Developer and Mentor Bindar Dosanjh, with over 20 years' experience, shows you how to: * Get on the property ladder * Create your desired income from property investing * Write your own pay cheques * Profit from distressed properties * Fund your deals using other people's money * Systemise your property business * Create your own financial independence plan and much more... This book provides the necessary guidance, tools, strategies and support. Bindar teaches a safe and secure way to start property investing, turning the fearful novice into a fiercely confident property investor.

Caroline Garnham, a former leading private client lawyer was head of Simmons &Simmons private client practice for fifteen years. She was nominated as one of the top five leading private client lawyers in 2011 and was a contributor for the Financial Times for twelve years on tax and trusts. Caroline pioneered the area of law now known as Family Governance. This book draws on her extensive knowledge and intimate experience in working for some of the world's wealthiest families. Pulling together scores of examples, she looks at the relationship between the UHNW community and their advisors from both perspectives. She believes that by understanding each other they can work together more productively. "Working as a private client lawyer for more than twenty years I developed a sympathy for you, the Super-Rich community. It is a community people find hard to feel sorry for - you do not have to worry about the mortgage being paid or where the next meal is coming from but your concerns nevertheless can keep you awake at night. You contribute significantly in taxes which benefits us all. In Great Britain, the top 1% pay 30% of our income tax; you spend in our shops and oil the wheels of our economy - and yet in general you are poorly served and often despised. As wealthy individuals I understand you are being fingered for money ALL THE TIME. It is hardly surprising therefore that you fly off the handle when you are being fleeced for yet more. Being pestered for money is a way of life for you which most of you hate which is why you want to preserve your privacy." This book is designed for you, the super-rich and those aspiring to be super rich. This book will tell you how to manage your advisors, your wealth and how to enjoy it all.

Our world is changing at a faster rate than ever before. In the last decade, empowered and perhaps enslaved by new technology, there have been whole paradigm shifts in the way we live our lives, communicate, and collaborate. Yet our approach to life-planning and our concept of retirement have failed to keep up. We are still following a retirement model from the age when technology meant recording the radio's 'Top Forty' onto a cassette to play in your Sony Walkman. Our understanding of health and aging has also been transformed. Yet, our current life and retirement planning pre-dates the decoding of the human genome and reflects a time when sports nutrition comprised top-class footballers drinking five pints of larger as a post-match hydration. We now live in a world where it is normal for healthy 60-year olds to do activities that used to be the realm of 30-something's. In this book, Dominic Watson takes you on a very different retirement journey, one that is fun and leads to a dynamic and enthralling destination. He shows you how retirement can be done on your terms. Using incredible, real life case studies this book will give you the insights on how to live the life you want. Redefining retirement the Rock Star Way isn't about turning life's amplifier down, it's about well and truly ramping it up to eleven and beyond! What are you waiting for? Let's rock! Times have changed: "It is retirement Jim but not as we know it"

Why has old-age security become less solidaristic and increasingly tied to risky capitalist markets? Drawing on rich archival data that covers more than fifty years of American history, Michael A. McCarthy argues that the critical driver was policymakers' reactions to capitalist crises and their political imperative to promote capitalist growth.Pension development has followed three paths of marketization in America since the New Deal, each distinct but converging: occupational pension plans were adopted as an alternative to real increases in Social Security benefits after World War II, private pension assets were then financialized and invested into the stock market, and, since the 1970s, traditional pension plans have come to be replaced with riskier 401(k) retirement plans. Comparing each episode of change, Dismantling Solidarity mounts a forceful challenge to common understandings of America's private pension system and offers an alternative political economy of the welfare state. McCarthy weaves together a theoretical framework that helps to explain pension marketization with structural mechanisms that push policymakers to intervene to promote capitalist growth and avoid capitalist crises and contingent historical factors that both drive them to intervene in the particular ways they do and shape how their interventions bear on welfare change. By emphasizing the capitalist context in which policymaking occurs, McCarthy turns our attention to the structural factors that drive policy change. Dismantling Solidarity is both theoretically and historically detailed and superbly argued, urging the reader to reconsider how capitalism itself constrains policymaking. It will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, historians, and those curious about the relationship between capitalism and democracy.

Pension systems in Europe and Central Asia are facing unprecedented challenges. While many of the countries in the region have undertaken reforms when their economies encounter diffi cult times, these reforms are frequently reversed as soon as the situation improves. However, the demographic trends in the region require new, sustained efforts toward changing the pension system to provide adequate yet sustainable benefi ts. The Inverting Pyramid documents the progressive generosity of pension systems in Europe since inception, with current popular expectations based on recent generous promises, which are neither based on historically customary practice nor affordable over time. The increased generosity in the past was driven by the assumption of a demographic pyramid with an ever expanding base of young people, but the last decades have revealed that the pyramid is beginning to invert in some countries, with fewer young people at the bottom and many more elderly people on top, making that generosity no longer affordable. Returning to the generosity of the pension system of the 1970s will go a long way toward providing adequate and sustainable benefi ts in the future. However, a more sustainable system will also require labor market reforms, improvements in savings mechanisms, and in many cases additional public resources. The extent to which a country can undertake reforms in labor markets, savings, and public fi nances can infl uence the extent to which its pension system will need to change, with different solutions possible for different countries. But in all cases, the changes that need to be made have to be widely discussed and publicly accepted to prevent painful reversals. The book hopes to stimulate widespread public discussion of the issue so that countries can make sustainable choices with gradual plementation, before they face such daunting challenges that they have to undertake sudden harsh measures.

Trustees play an important role in the management of the retirement fund they are affiliated to. Sadly, many trustees and boards fail to live up to their promise and potential, mainly because they’re part-time trustees without a complete understanding of their fiduciary, legal and compliance duties, obligations and responsibilities. Trustees are required to consult with experts on matters that they lack sufficient knowledge in. However, some understanding of the subject matter is required among them in order for the board to assimilate the advice that they are given. The purpose of this book is to combine most of the many fields that trustees are expected to have a knowledge of in one publication, written in easy-to-understand layman’s language, that can serve as a guide for the average trustee. The various types of retirement funds and benefits payable inside and outside of the fund are explained. Legislation with regard to minimum benefits, the responsibility of trustees to communicate to members and other stakeholders and what the minimum requirements are for this communication are also discussed. The role, fiduciary responsibility and duties of the board of trustees are carefully unpacked, the various pieces of legislation that the trustees deal with and the role that the rules of the fund play in the fulfilling of their duties are explained. All these are discussed and brought into perspective with the principles of good governance and ethics. And to make the read so much more interesting, the book includes about 50 pages of the principles of investments that a trustee should know. This publication should make trustees and boards less reliant on advice from the so-called experts whose advice leans towards their own interest. It should enable trustees to distinguish between the many excellent, honest and hardworking advisors and the few unscrupulous ones.

A pension is a voluntary benefit offered by employers to assist employees in providing for their financial security in retirement. Public and private sector defined benefit pension plans are subject to different rules and guidance regarding discount rates -- interest rates used to determine the current value of estimated future benefit payments. This book addresses the significance of differences in approaches used to determine discount rates among public and private plans; purposes for measuring the value of a plan's future benefits and key considerations for determining discount rate policy; and approaches selected countries have taken to choose discount rates.

Little public data are available to assess the extent to which sponsors of defined benefit plans are offering participants immediate lump sums to replace their lifetime annuities, but certain laws and regulations provide incentives for use of this practice. Although the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has primary responsibility for overseeing pension sponsors' reporting requirements, it does not require sponsors to report such lump sum offers, making oversight difficult. Pension experts generally agree that there has been a recent increase in these types of offers. Since 2012, a number of large pension plan sponsors have given selected participants a limited-time option of receiving their retirement benefits in the form of a lump sum. Although sponsors' decisions to make certain lump sum "window" offers may be permissible by law, questions have been raised about participants' understanding of the financial tradeoffs associated with their choice. This book focuses on the prevalence of lump sum offers and sponsors' incentives to use them; the implications for participants; and the extent to which selected lump sum materials provided to participants include key information.

Millions of employees change jobs each year and some leave their savings in their former employers' 401(k) plans. If their accounts are small enough and they do not instruct the plan to do otherwise, plans can transfer their savings into an IRA without their consent. The United States Government Accountability Office examined the implications for 401(k) plan participants of being forced out of plans and into these IRAs. This book examines what happens over time to the savings of participants forced out of their plans; the challenges 401(k) plan participants face keeping track of retirement savings in general; and how other countries address similar challenges of inactive accounts. This book also discusses the issues plan sponsors, fiduciaries, service providers, and other parties face in handling plan benefits payable to participants and beneficiaries who cannot be found or are nonresponsive.

The private sector pension system in the United States represents trillions of dollars in assets and is a key source of financial security for millions of Americans. To promote transparency and enhance retirement security, legislation and regulations require that plan sponsors provide numerous reports to Labor, IRS, and PBGC, and numerous disclosures to plan participants. This book examines the reports and disclosures pension plans are required to make to government agencies and plan participants; the ways, if any, reports to agencies may be inefficient or ineffective; and the ways, if any, disclosures to participants may be inefficient or ineffective. The book also discusses the extent to which law and regulations permit electronic disclosure to participants; explores the reported advantages and disadvantages associated with electronic delivery; and evaluates the weaknesses identified, if any, in the agencies' electronic delivery requirements

401(k) plan participants separating from their employers must decide what to do with their plan savings. Many roll over their plan savings to IRAs. As GAO previously reported, there is concern that participants may be encouraged to choose rollovers to IRAs in lieu of options that could be more in their interests. This book identifies challenges separating plan participants may face in implementing rollovers; obtaining clear information about which option to choose; and understanding distribution options.

In response to concerns over the adequacy of retirement savings, Congress has created incentives to encourage individuals to save more for retirement through a variety of retirement plans. Some retirement plans are employer-sponsored, such as 401(k) plans, and others are established by individual employees, such as Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). This book describes the primary features of two common retirement savings accounts that are available to individuals. It also examines the evidence on the cost of conflicted investment advice and its effects on Americans' retirement savings; and describes circumstances where service providers may have conflicts of interest in providing assistance related to the selection of investment options for plan sponsors and plan participants, and steps the Department of Labor (Labor) has taken to address conflicts of interest related to the selection of investment options.

In 2014, the federal government will forgo an estimated $17.45 billion in tax revenue from IRAs, which Congress created to ensure equitable tax treatment for those not covered by employer-sponsored retirement plans. Congress limited annual contributions to IRAs to prevent the tax-favored accumulation of unduly large balances. But concerns have been raised about whether the tax incentives encourage new or additional saving. Congress is reexamining retirement tax incentives as part of tax reform. This book describes IRA balances in terms of reported FMV aggregated by taxpayers; examines how IRA balances can become large; and assesses how IRS ensures that taxpayers comply with IRA tax laws.

This book investigates the urban and rural public pension systems in China with overlapping-generations (OLG) models. This book is composed of three parts. Part one analyses the urban public pension system, part two explores the rural public pension system, and part three discusses some possible public pension systems. It is difficult to find a book to study the Chinese public pension systems with the OLG model. This book can fill the gap in the market. It has the following distinctive features. Firstly, instead of pay-as-you-go or fully funded public pension systems, this book studies the Chinese partially funded pension systems that combines the social pool account with individual accounts. Each chapter includes the author's original work. Secondly, it investigates the public pension systems in a way of following proper sequence and making steady progress. This is convenient for readers to deepen their understanding of the Chinese public pension systems with OLG models. This book is fit for scholars outside China who are interested in the Chinese public pension systems, researchers in China who want to investigate the Chinese public pension systems with the OLG model, doctoral students, master degree students and senior undergraduate students. This book can help scholars outside China to promote their research on the Chinese public pension systems. Secondly, economists in developed countries studied public pension systems by employing OLG model since 1970s; but the model is still strange for most Chinese scholars. This book can help them to utilise the model, describe their research in English and express it in a comparative normal presentation. Thirdly, this book can provide references for doctoral students, master degree students and senior undergraduate students to learn how to use OLG models to study Chinese public pensions. Finally, it can open a door to the world outside China, show the state of research on public pension systems with OLG mode in China, and promote exchange and talk for the Chinese and foreign academic circles.

Pension advances and pension investments are products that, while based on or related to pension benefits, are generally distinct from the pensions themselves. A pension advance is an up-front lump sum provided to a consumer in exchange for a certain number and dollar amount of the consumer's future pension payments plus various fees. Pension investments, the related product, provide investors a future income stream when they make an up-front lump-sum investment in one or more pensioners' incomes. There have been recent concerns about companies attempting to take advantage of retirees using pension advances. This book describes the number and characteristics of pension advance companies and marketing practices; evaluates how pension advance terms compare with those of other products; and evaluates the extent to which there is related federal oversight.

The ongoing global financial crisis, coupled with the continued dramatic increases in life expectancy, have escalated the concerns countries have regarding the sustainability of their pension systems and how these retirement schemes will be financed. From 1998 to 2008, close to 30 countries embarked on privatising reforms to their pension programs. Some of these countries introduced new pension reforms directed at private individual accounts while reducing the size of the state social security system. The focus of other reforms during this period varied but was primarily aimed at strengthening basic protection for economically at-risk older individuals, increasing benefit coverage and/or improving the overall fiscal sustainability of these systems. However, the move towards greater coverage and sustainability was interrupted by the world-wide financial meltdown. This has led to a reassessment of pension systems and reform approaches. This volume was assembled to review the status of pension reforms globally and to gain a glimpse of the trends emerging as countries adjust to the new age of macroeconomic world-wide uncertainty. The chapters in this volume provide concise, clear and dispassionate discussions on these trends and reforms as well as frank appraisals of the consequences of alternative policies. Experts from Europe, the United States and the emerging economies of Brazil, China and India approach pension reform and reassessment from different perspectives; however, each provide forthright analyses and assessment of the consequences of the "new normal".

The use of matching contributions to enhance the participation and level of savings in pensions system has now been in use for nearly three decades in a number of high income countries. Increasingly, countries across the full range of economic development are looking to the design as a means of addressing the low rates of participation in formal pension and other retirement savings systems. A number of countries have recently introduced innovations in their pension systems that significantly rely on contributions matches and related types of direct subsidies to provide incentives for groups that mandates and other indirect methods such as preferential tax treatment have been unsuccessful in reaching. There is particular interest among developing countries in utilizing this design to extend coverage to informal sector and low income workers that typically do not pay income related taxes. This volume provides descriptions and analysis of the design, experience and outcomes achieved in the high income countries where there information about the dynamics and outcomes that this approach has achieved is not beginning to emerge. It also reviews new efforts to use the design in a number of other settings in which the matching contributions have been included as a significant element in reform of the pension system. The review of the experience with matching contribution across this full range of settings provides important observations and some initial lessons for policy makers and analysts who may be considering or evaluating the use of this approach to increase pension coverage.

Over the past 25 years, defined contribution plans, including 401(k) plans, have become the most prevalent form of employer-sponsored retirement plan in the United States. The majority of assets held in these plans are invested in stocks and stock mutual funds, and the decline in the major stock market indices in 2008 greatly reduced the value of many families' retirement savings. The effect of stock market volatility on families' retirement savings is just one issue of concern to Congress with respect to defined contribution retirement plans. This book examines fee considerations and country comparisons relating to defined contribution plans for retirement with a focus on increasing access to employer-sponsored plans, raising participation and contribution rates, helping participants make better investment choices, requiring clearer disclosure of fees charged to plan participants, preserving retirement savings when workers face economic hardship or change jobs, and promoting life annuities as a source of retirement income.