By Bridget Bearden Source: EBRI The second Spending in Retirement Survey was fielded during the summer of 2022. Nearly 2,000 American retirees between the ages of 62 and 75 were surveyed to assess how spending patterns and retirement well-being have changed since 2020. Read the full article
By Christine Williamson Source: Pensions & Investments The 1,000 largest U.S. retirement plans had a banner year, propelled in large part by strong returns in public and private equity and other alternative investment strategies, as well as from higher contributions to defined benefit and defined contribution plans. In the year ended Sept. 30, aggregate assets of the 1,000 largest U.S. retirement funds rose 16.9% to $14.13 trillion, a big improvement from the previous year when assets managed to rise [...]
By Stephanie Asymkos Source: Yahoo! Money The pandemic forced more older workers to retire — often before they were ready financially — a new study found, widening the country’s growing retirement inequality gap and leaving certain baby boomers vulnerable to poverty in their golden years. During the pandemic, an additional 1.7 million Americans retired earlier than what would have been expected during the normal times, according to a recent report from The New School’s Retirement Equity Lab. While the [...]
Source: Pension Policy International The COVID-19 pandemic has had an outsize effect on people 50 and older: Not only did it impact older adults’ health more severely than younger ones, but it also forced many into early retirement and prompted others to take withdrawals from their savings earlier than they had planned. “The prospects of a secure retirement for millions of workers will be even more precarious following the pandemic, and more Americans of all ages will need to [...]
By Sophie Baker Source: Pensions & Investments The social factor within ESG will be of increasing importance to global pension funds over the next three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with passive allocations set to rise. Research by DWS and CREATE-Research found that 66% of pension funds intend to increase allocations to the 'S' pillar through passive allocations over the coming years. Two-thirds (67%) said they will choose their passive managers based on a track record of achieving [...]
The Teamsters are euphoric about the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) clearing its final legislative hurdle in the House today, ensuring more than 1 million U.S. workers and retirees in struggling multiemployer pension plans will receive the nest eggs they were promised while other Americans hit hard by the global pandemic get the help they need. President Biden is expected to sign the bill into law shortly. And when he does, it will mark the culmination of a [...]
The COVID-19 pandemic relief legislation set for a vote this week in the House contains a provision to save struggling union pension plans that experts say has a good shot at passing, forecasting a possible end to a $65 billion funding crisis that threatens one million retirees' pensions. The American Rescue Plan, which cleared the House Budget Committee on Monday, would provide direct assistance to roughly 200 financially struggling union pension plans through the federal government's safety net for [...]
The House Ways and Means Committee significantly boosted the prospect for passage of much needed pension relief that would protect the hard-earned and promised benefits of active and retired truck drivers, nurses and health care workers, plumbers and construction trade workers – people who we now recognize and honor as America’s essential workers in this time of crisis. On February 12, the Committee “marked up” and voted in favor of the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of [...]
Retirement experts have been warning for years that more than 1 million workers and retirees could lose their pensions if Congress doesn’t act. Now help from Washington might finally arrive, thanks to an unlikely legislative opening provided by the pandemic. Congressional Democrats are moving a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan through a process known as budget reconciliation, hoping to send it to President Joe Biden’s desk this month. A proposal to shore up troubled pension plans and the federal [...]
Plan sponsors should keep a close watch on retirement plan litigation, as the effects of COVID-19 might spark new lawsuits. The market volatility experienced in March and April, coupled with the cybersecurity risks of remote work, could position some employers to face litigation in the new year, industry experts say. Smaller businesses, which normally lack the resources to invest in multifaceted cybersecurity measures and are therefore susceptible to cyber breaches, may be at risk, says Jordan Mamorsky, an ERISA [...]
The little agency responsible for killing mosquitoes and rats in the Coachella Valley will see its bill for worker pensions nearly triple over just four years. Payments will also nearly triple for Cal-OPTIMA, Orange County’s health care system for low-income people, seniors and those with disabilities, as well as for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, the folks who bring events to the historic stadium in Exposition Park. They’ll more than double for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which [...]
Approximately half (51%) of UK savers are likely to review or reduce pension contributions in favour of short-term saving or debt reduction or elimination as a result of the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, according to research by BlackRock. Its Defined contribution (DC) pulse survey, which surveyed 1,000 UK savers, also found that 76% agree that they need to be more careful about their financial future, although a further 44% see retirement saving as important. However, more than half (51%) said [...]
Indiana’s public pension funds for state and local government employees, including teachers, has apparently weathered the financial markets’ volatility during the coronavirus pandemic, new data from the state show. The General Assembly’s Pension Management Oversight Committee heard Wednesday that the Indiana Public Retirement System increased its pension assets by 2.56% to $30.6 billion during the 2020 budget year, which ran from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020. According to INPRS, the state’s prepaid pension programs were 90.6% funded, [...]
The number of money management firms with employees working from home has barely budged over the summer, a Callan survey released Wednesday showed. Callan said 81% had not opened their offices as of Aug. 15, nearly the same as the 84% that had reported keeping their doors closed in June. The investment consultant's second "Coping with COVID-19" survey report said 44% of the 98 responding firms have not set a date for returning to the office. Of the remaining [...]
One of the many upheavals caused by the COVID-19 crisis has been some reordering of environmental, social and governance priorities for institutional investors. While climate change and other environmental issues "were almost synonymous with ESG, the pandemic forced us to shift, and forced owners of capital to think about the other letters in ESG," said Nathan S. Shetty, Chicago-based head of multiasset portfolio management for Nuveen LLC, the money management arm of TIAA-CREF. The global health crisis plus renewed [...]
The funding status of the largest corporate pension plans in the U.S. have rebounded during the second quarter of 2020, due to improvements in the equity and bond markets, according to Willis Towers Watson data. “The first quarter was a more difficult quarter for the equities,” says Joseph Gamzon, senior director of retirement at Willis Towers Watson, a global advisory, broking and solutions company. “For most pension plan sponsors the combination of the equity markets performing well and the [...]
Dorian Mintzer loves her work. A 74-year-old psychologist, coach and author, she has no plan to retire, and has continued to work during the pandemic, doing teletherapy from her home in the Boston area. Now, like millions of other older working Americans, Dr. Mintzer is uncertain about the future of her job — much will depend on whether health insurers continue to cover teletherapy post-pandemic. “I’m going to keep working virtually — the idea of going into an office [...]
The coronavirus outbreak has presented daunting challenges for an already-struggling multiemployer pension plan system. It's also amplifying calls for Congress to step up and pass legislation to protect against millions of retirees losing their financial livelihood. More than a hundred multiemployer pension plans covering over a million workers and retirees were on the ropes even before COVID-19 became a household term, and that number could more than double depending on how the pandemic plays out, according to a letter [...]
The Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has published a draft version of a fourth economic relief package in response to the coronavirus pandemic, dubbed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act or the “Heroes Act.” The wide-ranging legislation addresses a host of issues, from providing supplemental funding to the SNAP food security program to creating a special fund to support struggling fisheries. Notably, the entire Division D section of the legislation is dedicated to [...]
Unions and pension schemes are being supportive of employers struggling with the pandemic. When the recovery starts that support should be repaid. Across the whole economy, employers are under unprecedented strain as they deal with lockdown and economic contraction. Companies with defined benefit pension schemes could face particular short-term pressures, as turmoil in financial markets may increase deficits – the gap between the assets a scheme has and the pensions it must pay – at exactly the time they are [...]
Below is an April 24, 2020 letter written by NCCMP Executive Director Michael D. Scott. Dear Multiemployer Community, Today, the President signed H.R. 266 which provided additional authority for the Paycheck Protection Program and support for health care providers. This is commonly referred to as the COVID 3.5 stimulus package. In less than eight weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has put more than 26.4 million Americans out of work and driven Congress and the Federal Reserve to structure more than [...]
States should be able to pursue bankruptcy rather than relying further on the federal government during the coronavirus pandemic, and any federal assistance should not be spent on addressing pension underfunding, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Wednesday during a radio interview. Radio host Hugh Hewitt asked whether Mr. McConnell would insist on reforms of state pension plans if states get more funding from the next COVID-19 assistance measure expected from Congress. "There's not going to be any [...]
The Senate via unanimous consent passed a nearly $500 billion coronavirus relief package Tuesday aimed mostly at small businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. After weeks of negotiation between key Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and White House officials, an agreement was reached on an additional $321 billion for the small-business-oriented Paycheck Protection Program. Under the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, which was signed into law March 27, roughly $350 billion [...]
CORPaTH has reached out to Congressional leaders to offer a variety of powerful and pragmatic ideas to assist in creating positive solutions to the pension crisis affecting millions of Americans who are currently retired or who hope to retire in the future. Click here to read the letter. Click here to read the letter.
For most Americans these days, timing is everything when it comes to retirement. At the moment, it looks like those who recently retired or who are on the cusp of retirement may have picked a bad time to be born. For them, the steep drop in the investment markets caused by the coronavirus pandemic came at just the wrong moment. History tells us that the markets will recover and that cycles of ups and downs are inevitable. But under [...]
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of millions of working people and our families, and the labor movement has been working tirelessly to limit the impact of this crisis on our health and livelihoods. We worked to make sure the relief packages Congress recently passed put the needs of working families and our communities first. To help navigate these new and expanded federal and state benefits and assistance programs, we put together an online resource that has [...]
ESG investors need to up their game in holding companies to account on social issues such as labor rights and employment contracts, said the head of biggest network of responsible investment firms. Fiona Reynolds, chief executive officer of the Principles for Responsible Investment, said in a blog post Friday that firms which consider environmental, social and governance issues when investing have paid too little attention to “the modern forms of exploitation surrounding the gig economy.” Lack of paid sick [...]
For years, the country’s public pension plans have faced a yawning gap between what they owe and what they can pay. From the State of California’s public employees’ retirement plan, with more than 1.6 million participants, to tiny funds for employees of local mosquito-control programs in Illinois, public pensions are the time bomb of government finance. Now the coronavirus pandemic has it ticking faster. Already chronically underfunded, pension programs have taken huge hits to their investment portfolios over the [...]
Over the past month at PRI we have been hard at work contingency planning, reshaping our organisational strategy and ways of working in response to the Covid-19 crisis, as I’m sure many of you have also been doing. We’ve been seeking firstly to ensure the health and safety of all our global staff, but importantly also putting plans in place to enable us to continue to deliver on our commitments to you wherever we can. More than that, we’ve [...]
While the White House and lawmakers haggle over the terms of an emergency economic-stabilization package, Denmark has gone big—very, very big—to defeat the unprecedented challenge of the coronavirus. This week, the Danish government told private companies hit by the effects of the pandemic that it would pay 75 percent of their employees’ salaries to avoid mass layoffs. The plan could require the government to spend as much as 13 percent of the national economy in three months. That is [...]
The Senate approved on Wednesday a roughly $2 trillion economic stimulus package for affected companies and workers that also provides some temporary relief for retirement plan sponsors and participants. Final approval is expected Friday in the House of Representatives, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she expected to debate the measure on the floor. Defined benefit plan sponsors gained a one-year holiday from making their 2020 contributions, but did not get other measures sought, including delayed reporting or [...]