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In a rich, calibrated life-cycle model, we show that well-designed mandatory pension plans significantly improve the welfare of individuals procrastinating on savings, and even improve most rational individuals' welfare through a return tax advantage and fair annuitization. For a group of heterogeneous savers, in terms of preferences and sophistication, the best plan has contributions of 10% of income from age 30, a glidepath investment strategy, payouts following a variable lifelong annuity, and options to choose a different investment strategy and to modify the annuitization feature. This plan generates an average welfare gain of $175,000 per individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many pension schemes offer annuities pooling mortality risk across members. Such pooling has been criticized for having a regressive bias benefitting risk classes with the longest expected longevity. However, knowledge on mortality risk unfolds over the life‐course, and it is optimal for risk averse households to annuitize all old‐age consumption already as young buying pooled contracts, even if fair annuities are available later in life or risk class is private information. Borrowing constraints impair such frontloading but are lessened by a mandated pooled annuity targeting the middle‐aged, improving welfare for all risk classes and the first‐best allocation may be implementable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze individual annuitization decisions at retirement in an environment with mandatory participation in a funded pension pillar and low average annuity price. Using administrative data from a large Swiss insurance company over the period 2011–2015, we document that, even in this favorable environment, only 42.7% of the retirees fully annuitize, against 45% taking full lump sum. We show that individual annuitization decisions strongly respond to financial incentives, measured by the Money Worth Ratio, and to the tax rates on annuity and lump‐sum payments. Lump‐sum payments are more common among French‐ and Italian‐speaking individuals. Using Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe data, we show that French‐ and Italian‐speaking Swiss are more likely to leave inheritance—thus suggesting that preferences for bequests may affect annuitization decisions. Finally, we provide evidence of asymmetric information, using the unused observable test, to show that individuals living in high mortality municipalities are less likely to annuitize and more likely to cash out their pension wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following New York’s highest court’s reinstatement of New York Insurance Regulation 187 in October 2022, consumer advocates have been hopeful that customer-focused standards supporting client best interest and only suitable products would next be adopted in California. As it happened, the California Department of Insurance had concerns over NAIC’s Model Annuity Suitability Regulation not going far enough to place the buyer’s interests above those of the seller (the agent or the carrier) and was inspired to press for New York-style regulations covering not just the sale of annuities but also life insurance. While 36 states have (as of April 2023) adopted the NAIC regulation, California has yet to do so, but is obligated to adopt at least minimum standards by 2025 or be in peril of federal intervention. The timing seemed appropriate for enhanced protection for consumers buying cash value life insurance and annuities. But during California’s harsh winter and early spring, strong headwinds pushed hard on more than its fragile climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed a hypothetical fixed-index annuity (FIA) contract linked to a 5 percent volatility-controlled index (VCI) and compared its performance with a traditional FIA linked to the S&P 500 Index, the stock benchmark itself, and a corporate bond benchmark. The simulation results showed that the FIA linked to the 5 percent VCI outperformed the traditional FIA, the bond benchmark, and enjoyed a higher sharp ratio than the stock benchmark. Risk parity, VCI, and the other factors contributing to the outperformance were studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in the tax benefits." Californians are accustomed to the occasional earthquake, technically the movement of tectonic plates far below the earth's surface. Most are benign (we stir our coffee with a 5.4 reading on the Richter scale), but a few are significant. In New York, the life and annuity industry--and resident consumers of insurance products--experienced a different kind of tectonic movement in the confirmation of new Client Best Interest and Product Suitability rules governing the sale of insurance products in New York. ("It's not in the stars to hold our destiny but ourselves" is a well-known Shakespearean quote about fate and destiny. The quote similarities are significant!). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that the supply of U.S. life annuities is constrained by interest rate risk. We identify this effect using annuity prices offered by life insurers from 1989 to 2019 and exogenous variations in contract-level regulatory capital requirements. The cost of interest rate risk management—conditional on the effect of adverse selection—accounts for about half of annuity markups, or 8 percentage points. The contribution of interest rate risk to annuity markups sharply increased after the Global Financial Crisis, suggesting new retirees' opportunities to transfer their longevity risk are unlikely to improve in a persistently low interest rate environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longevity crucially affects demand for pensions, insurance products and annuities. Consistent empirical evidence shows that women have historically experienced lower mortality rates than men. In this article, we study a measure of the gender gap in mortality rates, we call "Gender Gap Ratio", across a wide range of ages and for four countries: France, Italy, Sweden, and USA. We show the stylized facts that characterize the trend of the Gender Gap Ratio, both in its historical evolution and future projection. Focusing on an example temporary life annuity contract, we give a monetary consistency to the Gender Gap Ratio. We show evidence that a Gender Gap Ratio that ranges between 1.5 and 2.5, depending on age, translates into a significant reduction of up to 23% in the benefits from a temporary life annuity contract for women with respect to men, against the same amount invested in the life annuity. The empirical evidence discussed in this article documents the crucial importance of working toward a more widespread demographic literacy, for example, a range of tools and strategies to raise longevity consciousness among individuals and policy‐makers, in the framework of gender equality policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implicit healthy life expectancy used for actuarial calculations in some selected biometric data sets from the US, Australia and China. We are interested in checking the demographic/epidemiological coherence of these data sets because this health indicator is rarely presented when authors build their biometric data sets, nor when they are used to calculate long-term care insurance (LTCI) and life care annuity (LCAs) premiums, nor when they are employed in research articles to estimate the future demand for LTC services. We follow a methodology based on multistate life table methods that enables us to obtain a life expectancy matrix for individuals on the basis of their initial health state. We also present some additional indicators of longevity, mortality and morbidity, these being the median age at death, the interquartile range, the weighted modal age at death, the mortality ratio and the implicit LTC prevalence rates broken down by health state. We find several weaknesses that highlight the difficulty involved in building the biometric data sets needed to make an actuarially fair valuation of the premiums for LTCI and LCAs. We also verify the existence of the so-called "male–female health-survival paradox". From the perspective of a potential purchaser of this type of insurance products, disclosing and explaining the summary measures of health and longevity would make it easier for them to understand the need to protect themselves against the cost of possible LTC services and also make the computation of the premiums more transparent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a review of Michael Otsuka's book, "How to Pool Risks Across Generations: The Case for Collective Pensions." The author discusses the importance of pensions in applied ethics and argues that collective pensions, based on the principle of reciprocity, offer the best way for workers to maximize their expected pension income while respecting freedom and equality. The book covers different forms of pensions, such as collective defined contribution pensions, funded defined benefit pensions, and unfunded pay as you go pensions, and explores how they can address issues such as longevity risk and investment risk. The author concludes that collective pensions can be justified on grounds of reciprocity and provides a practical guide to understanding different pension schemes. [Extracted from the article]

This paper studies the valuation of equity-linked investment products embedded with a high-water mark (HWM) fee structure. Under the HWM fee structure, the insurance company charges threshold fees at a constant rate from the policyholder's account whenever the account value is lower than a pre-specified level, and levies HMW fees at another constant rate whenever the account is hitting new record highs that are higher than another pre-specified level. The dynamics of the logarithmic value of the policyholder's account, before fees, is assumed to follow either a two-sided jump-diffusion process with double exponential jumps, or a down-ward jump-diffusion process with exponential jumps. For the two-sided jump-diffusion model with HWM fees, using the Wiener–Hopf factorisation theorem and the duality lemma, we derive an explicit expression for its potential measure. For the down-ward jump-diffusion model with both threshold fees and HWM fees, we are facilitated with the excursion theory to derive an explicit expression of the potential measure. Using the above newly derived potential measures, we are able to obtain formulas for valuing the equity-linked annuity under the HWM fee structure. Finally, we illustrate our results with some numerical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of FinanzRundschau is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Defined contribution retirement pension systems need to improve the level and stability of payments as pensioners age. Longevity risk pooling is key, but so is flexibility to satisfy members' individual needs and preferences. We propose a tontine construct as a flexible and cost-effective investment option for the Chilean pension system. Payouts are for life, but variable since there are no explicit guarantees. Our proposal provides transparency, investment flexibility, and higher expected income streams than any of the existing options available to the country's pensioners. Importantly, it does not distort the existing investment and annuity markets; on the contrary, it complements them. Additionally, it provides a means to offer a form of longevity insurance even if insurers are unwilling to supply it. Furthermore, it is in line with the movement of many countries toward promoting longevity-risk sharing within their defined-contribution systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the topic of longevity risk and capital markets, focusing on the 2022-2023 update. It highlights the increasing importance of longevity risk and related capital market solutions in academic research and the life market. The article mentions various investment products created by the re/insurance industry and capital markets, such as mortality catastrophe bonds and longevity bonds. It also provides a summary of nine academic papers presented at the Longevity 17 conference, covering topics such as retirement income solutions, equity release mortgages, health inequalities, mortality forecasting, and long-term care in Taiwan. The article concludes by mentioning future conferences and their associated special issues. [Extracted from the article]

Research and product development efforts aimed at addressing retirement income needs have generally been focused on the accumulation side of financial planning. However, innovation and product development on the decumulation side of the equation has been limited. In this article, we utilize an asset allocation model for retirement that can include non-traditional investments to demonstrate how annuities are an integral component of a multi-asset portfolio, aiding in the management of risks unique to retirees and near-retirees. For optimal decumulation allocation, we propose a methodology that maximizes a measure of household financial well-being that considers the two most important, yet often conflicting, objectives in the decumulation phase of the retirement: a) minimizing shortfall risk, and b) maximizing potential bequest. We use this model to demonstrate how annuities could be a prudent addition to a portfolio of traditional stocks and bond investments to better manage sequence of returns or sequence of cash flows risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the behavior of Canadian life annuity prices by measuring how quickly and fully they respond to changes in market interest rates. The price responses, though not immediate, start relatively quickly and become more complete over time. Over the whole sample period, the responses appear to be asymmetric – annuity providers generally raise prices faster when interest rates decline than reduce prices when the opposite occurs, which is disadvantageous to annuity customers. In addition, we find unusual annuity price behavior during the period of the 2008 financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stability of income payments in a pooled annuity fund is studied. In those funds, members receive a fluctuating income depending on their experienced mortality in exchange for their pension savings. The focus is on describing the influence of different initial savings on the ability of the fund to provide a stable income in retirement. Because of this, members coincide in their characteristics except for their initial savings. We identify a term, which we dub 'implied number of homogeneous members', that directly links the initial savings to the size of the income fluctuations. Our main contribution is the analysis of this term and the development of a criterion to answer the question of whether or not a given group of same-aged people should pool their funds together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many economies have recently adopted the defined-contribution retirement financing system, but one disadvantage of this system is that retirees have to bear longevity risk. As a result, several economies have also introduced the public annuity plans. We analyze the similarities and differences between voluntary public annuity with ceiling (VPAc) plan and mandatory public annuity with flexibility (MPAf) plan that are empirically observed. Introducing either plan reduces the severity of adverse selection in public annuities, but further distorts the private annuity market. These two plans have systematically different effects on retirees' utility levels: the good health group is adversely affected and the average health group benefits. On the other hand, the poor health group benefits from the VPAc plan but may be adversely affected under the MPAf plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether individuals correctly assess the risk of default of annuity providers and incorporate this information into their decision‐making when purchasing an annuity. To do so, we analyze actual retirement product choices from a large administrative data set from Chile and exploit an exogenous change that decreased the coverage of government guarantees against annuity provider default. If individuals are rational and properly incorporate default risk into their decision process then, before this change, individuals should choose riskier providers that give higher annuity payments. However, we find that individuals' decisions are not influenced by changes in their protection against the risk of provider default. It seems that individuals have been unnecessarily reducing their annuity payments by not incorporating crucial information about their actual risk exposure to default when selecting annuities at retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Security claiming can be one of the most challenging financial planning decisions that a client makes. To help financial advisors better counsel their clients, we address three lessons a client should consider (choosing the Social Security annuity, separating the claiming date from the retirement date, selecting the best "free money" to pass up). Five claiming strategies that may meet a client's needs are also suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop two complete discounted-cash flow (DCF) frameworks for the valuation of constant-growth annuities and perpetuities. By 'complete' we mean that these frameworks allow the valuation of a firm or project by means of different DCF methods, particularly, the equity method, the free-cash-flow (FCF) method, the adjusted-present-value-method, and the capital-cash-flow method. This also requires the derivation of formulas that allow the translation between different required returns, like the required return on unlevered and levered equity, the discount rate in the FCF method, and the required return on the tax-shield. Our paper departs from the two most advocated and mutually exclusive frameworks when dealing with DCF. The first is based on Modigliani and Miller (M&M), where the FCF at different points in time are independently distributed. The second framework rests on the analysis of Miles and Ezzell (M&E) who presume a first-order autoregressive cash-flow process. Some elements of a 'complete' framework exist in the literature, but in our opinion, a complete picture has not been developed yet. The contributions of this paper are the following: (1) We develop (or expand) the set of formulas that are required for the valuation of constant-growth annuities and perpetuities; (2) The formulas we develop in this paper are based on a backward-iteration process, which in itself represents a suitable tool for firm valuation; (3) Using a numerical example, we show that the two mutually exclusive frameworks of M&M or M&E achieve very different valuation results; (4) It turns out that the expected returns and the growth rate of the FCF are partly linked, but this relationship is different in the two frameworks; (5) In our numerical examples, we show how the constant-growth annuity or perpetuity, can be integrated with an explicitly planned FCF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies optimal consumption and investment strategies with lifetime uncertainty to design a smooth pension product. In a simplified Black–Scholes market, we investigate three strategies for consumption and investment: the classical strategy, the habit strategy, and the hybrid strategy. Incorporating additive habit formation in preferences leads to a request for less consumption volatility. Studying the consumption dynamics, it turns out that the hybrid strategy complies with the same preferences as the habit strategy. In our design of a smooth pension product, we are highly inspired by the consumption structure under the hybrid strategy and let consumption be specified as a time-dependent weighted average of last year's consumption level and a standard market rate life annuity. We give two approaches for the investment portfolio. The numerical examples show that consumption under these approaches is less volatile than consumption under the classical strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Annuities provide a lifelong income stream and can therefore help individuals to mitigate the risk of outliving their savings, a highly topical issue in the context of increasing life expectancies. Given that real-world annuitization rates remain relatively low, we investigate the influence of behavioral biases on people's choice between a lifelong annuity and a lump sum payout. In so doing, we focus on the impact of default effects due to a preselected annuity option (default option) and the impact of the decision's timing (decisions on annuitization taken by younger individuals refer to a distant future, those taken by older individuals to a near future) on annuity uptake and health consciousness. We used a scientific survey panel to conduct an online experiment with a diversified sample of 339 participants (55.2% female, average age = 42.5 years). Our results show that the timing of the decision moderates the default effect on annuity uptake, in that the effect of a preselected (default) annuity option is stronger for distant-future decisions (i.e., choice of annuity instead of lump sum at retirement made by younger participants purchasing a deferred annuity) than for near-future decisions made by older individuals who are closer to retirement. We further find that the default effect moderates health consciousness after choosing an annuity. Health consciousness is stronger in the no-default condition than in the annuity default condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important financial decisions that pension participants make concerns how they access their pension assets when they terminate employment with their plan sponsor. Their choices depend both on own preferences and the options offered by their retirement plan. This paper examines both past and future pension withdrawal choices for those with defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pensions, separately. Our data are drawn from a set of pension distribution questions we fielded in the Understanding American Study. Results show significant differences in distribution choices based on the type of retirement plan, with individuals covered by DB plans significantly more likely to select annuities compared to similar employees covered by DC plans. We also find differences in how higher annual income affects annuity choices based on coverage by DB plans. Individuals with lower levels of financial literacy and lower annual income have less knowledge of basic pension characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze how taxes affect the choice between a life-long annuity and a one-off lump sum payment, the so-called annuitization decision. Using administrative data from a large Swiss pension fund, we impute taxes for the lump sum and the life-long annuity option. We show that taxes can explain a significant part of the variation in annuity rates. Exploiting kinks in the tax schedule of the one-off lump sum, we further find evidence for tax optimization strategies. Our findings suggest that individuals react strongly to tax incentives when making retirement choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human mortality has been improving faster than expected over the past few decades. This unprecedented improvement has caused significant financial stress to pension plan sponsors and annuity providers. The widely recognized Lee–Carter model often assumes linearity in its period effect as an integral part of the model. Nevertheless, deviation from linearity has been observed in historical mortality data. In this paper, we investigate the applicability of four nonlinear time-series models: threshold autoregressive model, Markov switching model, structural change model, and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model for mortality data. By analyzing the mortality data from England and Wales and Italy spanning the years 1900 to 2019, we compare the goodness of fit and forecasting performance of the four nonlinear models. We then demonstrate the implications of nonlinearity in mortality modeling on the pricing of longevity bonds as a practical illustration of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 through delayed claiming. Using a calibrated life‐cycle model, we determine that including deferred income annuities in DC accounts is welfare‐enhancing for all sex/education groups examined. We also show that providing access to well‐designed variable deferred annuities with some equity exposure further enhances retiree well‐being, compared to having access only to fixed annuities. Nevertheless, for those facing the highest mortality rates, delaying claiming social security is mostly preferred, whereas those anticipating living longer than average will benefit more from using accumulated DC plan assets to purchase deferred annuities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate a joint economic lot-size model with the possibility of cofinancing between members of a three-echelon supply chain (SC) including one supplier, one manufacture and one retailer. Given the differences in credit as well as differences in access to capital markets, SC members will be able to create a financial alliance to maximize the profits of each member. This study proposed a model to maximize the annuity stream of the SC by considering the financial interaction between SC members. Design/methodology/approach: This joint economic lot-sizing problem was described and modeled mathematically. To evaluate the mathematical model, different scenarios were considered with (and without) the possibility of financial interaction. Findings: It is suggested that, in addition to the goods and information flow among SC members, proper financial flow can also have an impact on the improvement of SC performance. Originality/value: While previous studies consider cofinancing between members of a two-echelon SC, this paper considers a three-echelon SC including one supplier, one manufacturer and one retailer where financial cooperation between different levels of the SC in both upstream and reverse directions will be possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background and Objectives Globally aging populations raise worldwide concerns about how an older population will be valued. Cross-culturally, many espouse that Eastern cultures revere their older adults more than Westerners, due to stronger collectivism and filial piety traditions. In contrast, this paper proposes a resource tension hypothesis, whereby rapid population aging causes pragmatic strain across all modernized societies, fostering ageism. Research Design and Methods Three studies supported this resource tension hypothesis, focusing on the pragmatic role of public pensions—a fundamental resource inherently pitting older versus younger generations—in fostering ageism. Study 1 tested the relationship between nation-level public pension rate and attitudes toward older adults by using World Values Survey and European Social Survey data sets. Study 2 further explored this relationship via priming both the pension-based resource scarcity and the intergenerational competition over the public pension. Study 3 offered an intervention—future-self-thinking via a photo ager—on reducing intergenerational tensions under pension scarcity conditions. Results Study 1 found a significant link between nation-level public pension rate and negative older adult attitudes across 39,700 World Values Survey, and 29,797 European Social Survey data points. Study 2 further supported the pension-ageism link via experimental methods. Participants who were reminded of the scarcity of pensions and intergenerational competition exhibited more negative attitudes toward older adults. Study 3 confirmed the effect of the future-self intervention on enhancing attitudes toward older adults even despite scarce pension resources. Discussion and Implications The findings support a resource explanation in driving perceptions of older adults, implicate pensions as a key mechanism driving intergenerational attitudes, and identify future-self thinking as a critical intervention. The present studies open up new research pathways for understanding and accommodating the globally aging population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytic expressions for the single and joint life annuities based on the Makeham–Beard mortality law have been derived recently in the literature, which depend on special mathematical functions such as hypergeometric functions. We verify that the arguments of the hypergeometric functions in the analytic expressions for the single and joint life annuities may assume values very close to unity (boundary of the convergence radius), and so numerical problems may arise when using them in practice. We provide, therefore, alternative analytic expressions for the single and joint life annuities where the arguments of the hypergeometric functions in the new analytic expressions do not assume values close to one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note is a complement to the paper (Stoch. Process. Appl. 144:72–84, 2022) by Eberlein, Kabanov and Schmidt on the asymptotics of the ruin probability in a Sparre Andersen non-life insurance model with investments into a risky asset whose price follows a geometric Lévy process. Using techniques from the theory of semi-Markov processes, we extend the result of (Eberlein, Kabanov and Schmidt in Stoch. Process. Appl. 144:72–84, 2022) to the case of annuities and models with two-sided jumps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to design the package of the R statistical software called "Annuity Random Interest Rate", referred hereinafter as AnnuityRIR, in order to calculate the value of an n-annuity with payments of one unit each when the interest rate is random. To do this, we have employed different approaches; the two main methodologies treated in this study consider that all non-central moments of the capitalization factor are known, or contrarily some of them are unknown. Consequently, five different approaches have been developed and the practical application of the proposed methods is reflected in this paper by pricing an annuity with a random risk-free interest rate during the last ten years. The version is available from CRAN: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/AnnuityRIR/index.html. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presently, the employee's associations are agitating across the nation to implement the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) instead of National Pension System (NPS). Some of the States in the country have already restored the Old Pension System for Government employees whereas the Government of India has also formulated a Committee under the Chairmanship of Finance Secretary for suggesting change in NPS to address the concern of the employees. The employees are concerned about the lower pension payout under NPS after the retirement. However no specific study has been carried out to know the actual difference in pension payout under NPS and OPS. The present study has been undertaken to know the quantitative difference between the two schemes under the assumption of different length of services and rate of return on NPS investment. The study reveals that OPS is much better than NPS from employees perspective. Initial pension under OPS is 2.5 times of pension under NPS in case of 20 years of service which is decreased to 1.3 times when length of service is taken as 35 years. Similar is the case for terminal pension. However, increase in length of service and increase in rate of return on NPS corpus decreases the relative difference in pension payout between the two schemes. Similarly, the amount invested to purchase annuity is another factor which affect the payout of pension under NPS. Further studies can be undertaken to know the effect of change in employer's contribution to NPS on pension payout. Another area for research is to know the possibilities of some hybrid mode of pension to Government employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investment attributes of annuities / pension plans, viz., return and risk, have been a subject of interest among academics and practitioners alike. Investors should carefully consider these factors when choosing an annuity policy to ensure they receive the best return on their investment while managing their risk appropriately. Overall, the findings of the study suggest that individuals' perceptions of their life expectancy play an important role in their decision-making while choosing a pension plan. Our study aims to investigate the place occupied by pensions in the investor's portfolio and examine whether economic, financial, and social changes drive the process of selection of a pension product by the investor vis-à-vis other alternative assets such as risk-free bonds and stocks. One of the major findings of our study is that as the rate of return (ROR) on an immediate life annuity is very low and the risk is high, its demand at lower levels of mortality is declining, while the demand for risk-free bonds and stocks has risen substantially. The study suggests that annuity providers should link immediate annuities to the equity market so as to improve the rate of return and thereby, this will attract more investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to assess various aspects concerning the payment phase of the old-age pension scheme, the socalled second pillar of the pension system in Slovakia. However, the conclusions may also be useful for other pension systems. Using the Lee-Carter model and standard actuarial methods, we conclude that the second pillar is advantageous for the high-income groups or in case of high performance of pension funds. We also address the issue of deferring the purchase of a lifetime annuity. Deferral can be beneficial when the yield of the pension fund exceeds a certain threshold value. This threshold usually raises with increasing age. We argue that the temporary pension is a disadvantageous product and its recent cancellation is correct. The main contribution of the paper subsists in a three-state model of long-term care insurance, using which we calculate corresponding replacement rates. Combined with a lifetime annuity, long-term care insurance can be beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actuaries have long been interested in the forecasting of mortality for the purpose of the pricing and reserving of pensions and annuities. Most models of mortality in age and year of death, and often year of birth, are not identifiable so actuaries worried about what constraints should be used to give sensible estimates of the age and year of death parameters, and, if required, the year of birth parameters. These parameters were then forecast with an ARIMA model to give the required forecasts of mortality. A recent article showed that, while the fitted parameters were not identifiable, both the fitted and forecast mortalities were. This result holds if the age term is smoothed with P-splines. The present article deals with generalized linear models with a rank deficient regression matrix. We have two aims. First, we investigate the effect that different constraints have on the estimated regression coefficients. We show that it is possible to fit the model under different constraints in R without imposing any explicit constraints. R does all the necessary booking-keeping 'under the bonnet'. The estimated regression coefficients under a particular set of constraints can then be recovered from the invariant fitted values. We have a black box approach to fitting the model subject to any set of constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have long been trying to understand why individuals dislike annuities. Here, we investigate if the process individuals use to assess the financial value of annuities may lead them to inaccurately value annuities. In Study 1, participants were asked to assess the monthly payments associated with a specific annuity lump sum or the annuity lump sum associated with a specific monthly payment. They were then asked to describe how they arrived at their answers. We find that when making this assessment, 42% of participants report attempts at using math, with some even describing mathematical formulas. Most other participants reported guessing instead. Reporting attempts at math is more common among participants with higher financial literacy and numeracy. Reported attempts at math, financial literacy, and numeracy predict arriving at more realistic financial values for annuities, as well as incorporating assessments of life expectancy in the math. Based on this process knowledge, we then designed an experiment in Study 2 and tested the effect of presenting information about life expectancy, providing feedback about payouts or their combination. We find that we can thereby change the assessed financial value of annuities and increase participants' interest in annuities, especially among participants that reported attempts at using math. Understanding the processes individuals use to assess the value of annuities informs theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investors planning for retirement balance three Ls: (1) lifestyle risk, hoping to maintain a consumption stream that provides a chosen standard of living; (2) longevity risk, hoping to remain solvent throughout their lifetime; and (3) legacy risk, hoping to leave a bequest to their heirs. We solve this multiple objective problem for a wide range of consumption and annuitization scenarios. For each scenario, we apply dynamic programming to optimally evolve the investments in the non-annuitized portion of the portfolio so as to minimize longevity risk. Our dynamic programming approach has the advantages of (1) generating results that are far superior to what standard Monte Carlo methods, static portfolios, and target date fund glide paths can provide and (2) not requiring utility functions, which are hard to specify for individuals. We show that investors who want to minimize their longevity and legacy risk and who are unable to annuitize their full consumption stream are best off avoiding even partial annuitization of their portfolio. For investors who are able to annuitize their full consumption stream, we quantify their longevity versus legacy risk trade-offs, enabling them to select the best annuity for their needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares expected pension default losses of employees and retirees before and after pension buyouts. The comparisons are made using a stochastic model calibrated with market data. The analysis shows that the lower protection level provided by the State Guarantee Association relative to that of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is a critical factor that explains the welfare reduction, or equivalently, larger expected pension default losses, of most retirees who become annuity holders in the buyouts. The analysis also shows that the employee welfare, or equivalently expected pension default gains or losses, depends on the continued PBGC protection and, critically, their employers' postbuyout default risk and pension funding status. Moreover, these employee welfare changes are quite different for the corporations included in this analysis. Our results suggest that welfare improvements depend on the PBGC and state insurance regulators' cooperation in protecting pension participants and supervising buyout insurers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]