Following the Pension Protection Act of 2006, there was a sharp increase in the use of TDFs as default investment options in defined contribution retirement plans. We document large differences in realized TDF returns and risk profiles, even for funds with the same target retirement date. Using...

Pricing and risk management for longevity risk has increasingly become a major challenge for life insurers and pension funds around the world. Risk transfer to financial markets, with their major capacity for efficient risk pooling, is an area of significant development for a successful...

This paper investigates factors associated with high quality Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) programs in financial services firms, and whether ERM quality enhances performance and signals credibility to the financial markets. ERM, developed with the assistance of the accounting profession,...

This discussion paper reviews the needs of Australian retirees for financial products and services especially annuity products and financial advice; how they are currently met in Australia; briefly evaluate some alternatives; and identify obstacles to greater annuitisation. These obstacles include...

The role of employers in setting up and overseeing pension schemes offered to their employees and the quality of investment schemes offered to individual investors have attracted considerable attention in the finance literature. This paper adds to the debate by showing that institutional...

This paper proposes a “Swedish” type actuarial balance sheet for a notional defined contribution scheme embedding disability insurance within the retirement pension system. The underlying framework supporting the actuarial balance relies on a multistate overlapping generations model that...

The Netherlands has been operating fully funded, defined benefit second pillar pension schemes that have consistently ranked high worldwide for delivering high replacement rates while featuring strong solidarity among members. Yet the long-term sustainability of the Dutch pension funds has been...

This paper investigates retirees' optimal purchases of fixed and variable longevity income annuities using their defined contribution (DC) plan assets and given their expected Social Security benefits. As an alternative, we also evaluate using plan assets to boost Social Security benefits...