Most defined contribution (DC) pension plans give their members a degree of choice over the investment strategy for their contributions. Many plans also offer a 'default' fund for members unable or unwilling to choose their own investment strategy. We analyse the range of default funds offered...

We analyse the range of default funds offered by UK stakeholder pension schemes, against the background of research that shows the majority of pension scheme members passively accept the default arrangements offered by the scheme sponsor. We find the default funds vary substantially in their...

We use a case study of a pension plan wishing to hedge the longevity risk in its pension liabilities at a future date. The plan has the choice of using either a customized hedge or an index hedge, with the degree of hedge effectiveness being closely related to the correlation between the value...

Governments are among the few agencies that can help the private sector hedge against the increasing problem of aggregate longevity risk. David Blake, Tom Boardman, Andrew Cairns and Kevin Dowd from the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School urge governments to issue longevity bonds as soon...

This study sets out a framework to evaluate the goodness of fit of stochastic mortality models and applies it to six different models estimated using English & Welsh male mortality data. The methodology exploits the structure of each model to obtain various residual series that are predicted to...

Many, if not most, individuals cannot be regarded as 'intelligent consumers' when it comes to understanding and assessing different investment strategies for their defined contribution pension plans. This gives very little incentive to plan providers to improve the design of their pension plans....

This study sets out a backtesting framework applicable to the multi-period-ahead forecasts from stochastic mortality models and uses it to evaluate the forecasting performance of six different stochastic mortality models applied to English & Welsh male mortality data. The models considered are:...

The huge economic significance of longevity risk for corporations, governments and individuals is beginning to be recognized and quantified. The traditional insurance route for managing this risk is capacity constrained, leaving the capital markets to provide an effective solution. We consider...