Insurance companies often follow highly correlated investment strategies. As major investors in corporate bonds, their investment commonalities subject investors to fire-sale risk when regulatory restrictions prompt widespread divestment of a bond following a rating downgrade. Reflective of...

Insurance companies often follow highly correlated investment strategies. As major investors in corporate bonds, their investment commonalities subject investors to fire-sale risk when regulatory restrictions prompt widespread divestment of a bond following a rating downgrade. Reflective of...

This document presents a multivariate analysis of the relations among daily returns of pension funds in Mexico from 1997 to 2019. Evidence of a positive relation among daily returns through five statistical methods is provided. We find Granger causality of the returns of some funds to others,...

The funding ratio is a financial indicator to measure the viability of pension funds. The paper analyzes how Swiss occupational pension funds' technical discount rate and asset allocation are related to the funding ratio. The paper shows that funds with weaker funding ratios apply higher rates...

Setting an adequate level for the fees charged by pension fund administrators is a key design element for policymakers when establishing a second pension pillar. A proper balance between the interest of future pensioners and the ones of administrators is required, but an optimal level of fees is...

Standard pay-as-you-go pension system is facing long-term and short-term sustainability challenges in several countries. Possible replacement of standard pension system might be in a form of private pension savings. Private pension savings are meaningful only if they provide sufficiently high...

• We offer the first empirical exploration of fixed indexed annuity returns based upon actual contracts that were sold and actual interest that was credited.• Annuity returns have been competitive with alternative portfolios of stocks and bonds.• Their design has limited the downside...

Annuities are perceived as being illiquid financial instruments, and this has limited their attractiveness to consumers and inclusion in financial models. However, short positions in annuities can be replicated using life insurance and debt, permitting long positions in annuities to be offset,...

There is a paucity of academic literature on stable value funds, although they occupy such a prominent place among retirement investment vehicles. They are offered in roughly one half of all defined contribution plans in the USA, with over $640 billion dollars worth of assets under management....