The UK faces both a productivity crisis and an export crisis which will permanently lower real living standards unless they are fixed soon. Skills (especially vocational) training is inadequate and significant numbers of working age people are on welfare benefits for health reasons. Companies...

Many people delay joining a pension plan until well into their working lives. We use a stochastic simulation model to show the cost of this delay in terms of the higher pension contributions that must eventually be paid to ensure an adequate retirement income. We find the levels of contributions...

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 consider the problem of optimally designing longevity risk transfers under asymmetric information. We focus on holders of longevity exposures that have superior knowledge of the underlying demographic risks, but are willing to take them off their balance sheets because of capital...

This report is the first major study of DC investment strategies used in UK defined contribution pension schemes. It is critical of 'traditional' arrangements and urges employers, trustees, and pension practitioners to consider innovative strategies for the default fund, in which the majority of...

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...

In the last few years, the risk of mortality improvements has become increasingly capital intensive for pension funds and annuity providers to manage. The reason is that longevity risk has been systematically underestimated, making balance sheets vulnerable to unexpected increases in...

We introduce a new modelling framework to explain socioeconomic differences in mortality in terms of an affluence index that combines information on individual wealth and income. The model is illustrated using data on older Danish males over the period 1985-2012 reported in the Statistics...

This paper updates Living with Mortality published in 2006. It describes how the longevity risk transfer market has developed over the intervening period, and, in particular, how insurance-based solutions – buy-outs, buy-ins and longevity insurance – have triumphed over capital markets...

On 29 May 2014, Rachel Reeves MP, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, launched an Independent Review of Retirement Income to look at how to boost defined contribution (DC) savers' retirement income. This review is led by Professor David Blake, Director of the Pensions Institute, with...