This is the fifth report of The Pensions Regulator’s (‘the regulator’) Scheme governance survey, conducted among trust-based occupational schemes. The previous, fourth report was published in 2009. This report represents the findings of the combined 2 waves of research that took place in March/April 2010 and February/March 2011.

The self-employed workers make up a small but significant minority of the workforce in many OECD countries. Moreover, transitions into and out of self-employment have become much more common for a larger group of workers. It is therefore of critical importance to review and assess the pension schemes available to self-employed workers across OECD countries. Given employment and income patterns commonly observed for this subgroup, it is also important to address the issue of compliance and enforcement towards a formal affiliation of this group to pension schemes on offer. This paper reviews three key aspects of pension schemes available to self-employed workers: coverage, contributions and benefits. In each part, analyses are undertaken not just by describing the rules governing these schemes but also looking into their actual functioning in terms of compliance and enforcement.

Occupational pensions play a major role in OECD countries and worldwide, complementing retirement income from state sources. At the end of 2009, private pension savings reached USD 25 trillion. Population ageing has led many OECD countries to undertake a wide range of pension reforms – the overall effect of which has been to reduce public pension promises and, in turn, to increase the importance of private pension savings for retirement.

This article examines the impact of labour market, financial market and demographic risks on
retirement income derived from defined contribution (DC) pension plans. The amount of retirement income that people investing in DC plans will get after retirement depends on several parameters that are not known with certainty. Indeed, labour market outcomes, such as employment prospects and real wage career paths, are uncertain. Moreover, future realisations of returns on different asset classes, portfolio returns, interest rates and inflation are also uncertain, as well as future life expectancy. These labour, financial and demographic risks make the amount of retirement income that is derived from DC plans inherently uncertain.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) commissioned this review of international pension schemes and pension reform to draw together evidence, potential learning points and areas of distinction between the UK and comparator countries, to inform implementation of the Government’s workplace pension reforms.

Pension reform is a focus of World Bank activities because pensions are an important part of the social safety net for workers covered by the formal pension system in many client countries. Pensions are a mechanism to reduce the risks of old-age poverty and a means to smooth lifetime income to maintain living standards in retirement.

The public pension system of Japan provides coverage for all, irrespective of occupation and income. Corporate pension plans provide additional benefits over the public pension in order to meet the diversified financial needs in retirement and play a key role in enriching people‘s life after retirement.

The motivation for this paper is the concern that financial advice – the topic of this conference – tends to focus on financial assets, applying tools that give prominence to the asset allocation decision. But most people have little financial wealth, and financial tools are often silent on the levers that will have a much larger effect on retirement security for the majority of Americans. These levers include delaying retirement, tapping housing equity through a reverse mortgage, and controlling spending. Moreover, even for many with substantial assets, these non-financial levers may be as powerful as asset allocation in attaining retirement security.

Over the last 30 years, 401(k) and other defined contribution retirement plans have displaced defined benefit pension plans in the private sector (US). Defined benefit plans traditionally provided benefits in the form of a lifetime annuity. In contrast, in 401(k) plans, annuitization is voluntary, rare, and often not even a plan option. Participants face the challenge of decumulating their wealth over their remaining lifetimes, trading off the risk of outliving that wealth against the cost of unnecessarily restricting their consumption.

It is estimated that transitioning to a low-carbon, and climate resilient economy, and more broadly „greening growth? over the next 20 years to 2030 will require significant investment and consequently private sources of capital on a much larger scale than previously. With their USD 28 trillion in assets, pension funds - along with other institutional investors - potentially have an important role to play in financing such green growth initiatives.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly one in three men between ages 55 and 61 did not work in January 2011 (US). This statistic includes men who were unemployed and looking for work, as well as those who were no longer in the labor force or never worked. Although the share of nonworking older men increased dramatically because of job losses created by the Great Recession, it has been steadily on the rise since 1990 when only around one in four older men was not working.

The 2007-09 recession was the most severe economic downturn of the post-World War II era. The nation’s output (GDP) fell 8 percent below trend between the fourth quarter of 2007 and mid-2009, and the unemployment rate doubled to over 9 percent. On average, households lost one-quarter of their wealth between the middle of 2007 and early 2009, and a third of those losses were in home equity. The total magnitude of the economic losses can be estimated with some precision from aggregate economic statistics, such as the national accounts and the flow of funds accounts. In the immediate aftermath of the recession, however, we knew much less about the distribution of those losses across the general population. Information from more detailed surveys about changes in the economic circumstance of households is now becoming available.