Pension Design and Risk Sharing: Mixed Solutions Between Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution for Public Pension Schemes

Author(s):  
Pierre Devolder ◽  
Sébastien de Valeriola
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
IQBAL OWADALLY ◽  
RAHIL RAM ◽  
LUCA REGIS

Abstract Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) pension schemes are a variant of collective pension plans that are present in many countries and especially common in the Netherlands. CDC schemes are based on the pooled management of the retirement savings of all members, thereby incorporating inter-generational risk-sharing features. Employers are not subject to investment and longevity risks as these are transferred to plan members collectively. In this paper, we discuss policy related to the proposed introduction of CDC schemes to the UK. By means of a simulation-based study, we compare the performance of CDC schemes vis-à-vis typical Defined Contribution schemes under different investment strategies. We find that CDC schemes may provide retirees with a higher income replacement rate on average, together with less uncertainty.


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subramaniam Iyer

ABSTRACTAmong the systems in place in different countries for the protection of the population against the long-term contingencies of old-age (or retirement), disability and death (or survivorship), defined-benefit social security pension schemes, i.e. social insurance pension schemes, by far predominate, despite the recent trend towards defined-contribution arrangements in social security reforms. Actuarial valuations of these schemes, unlike other branches of insurance, continue to be carried out almost exclusively on traditional, deterministic lines. Stochastic applications in this area, which have been restricted mainly to occasional special studies, have relied on the simulation technique. This paper develops an analytical model for the stochastic actuarial valuation of a social insurance pension scheme. Formulae are developed for the expected values, variances and covariances of and among the benefit expenditure and salary bill projections and their discounted values, allowing for stochastic variation in three key input factors, i.e., mortality, new entrant intake, and interest (net of salary escalation). Each deterministic output of the valuation is thus supplemented with a confidence interval, that is, a range with an attached probability. The treatment covers the premiums under the different possible financial systems for these schemes, which differ from the funding methods of private pensions, as well as the testing of the level of the Fund ratio when the future contributions schedule is pre-determined. Although it is based on a relatively simplified approach and refers only to retirement pensions, with full adjustment in line with salary escalation, the paper brings out the stochastic features of pension scheme projections and illustrates a comprehensive stochastic valuation. It is hoped that the paper will stimulate interest in further research, both of a theoretical and a practical nature, and lead to progressively increasing recourse to stochastic methods in social insurance pension scheme valuations.


1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-966 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J. Exley ◽  
S.J.B. Mehta ◽  
A.D. Smith

ABSTRACTIncreasingly, modern business and investment management techniques are founded on approaches to measurement of profit and risk developed by financial economists. This paper begins by analysing corporate pension provision from the perspective of such financial theory. The results of this analysis are then reconciled with the sometimes contradictory messages from traditional actuarial valuation approaches and the alternative market-based valuation paradigm is introduced. The paper then proposes a successful blueprint for this mark-to-market valuation discipline and considers whether and how it can be applied to pension schemes both in theory and in practice. It is asserted that adoption of this market based approach appears now to be essential in many of the most critical areas of actuarial advice in the field of defined benefit corporate pension provision and that the principles can in addition be used to establish more efficient and transparent methodologies in areas which have traditionally relied on subjective or arbitrary methods. We extend the hope that the insights gained from financial theory can be used to level the playing field between defined benefit and defined contribution arrangements from both corporate and member perspectives.


Author(s):  
Lorenzo Torricelli

Abstract The defined convex combination (DCC) pay-as-you-go public pension systems recently introduced in the literature are a form of hybridization between defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) designed to maintain intergenerational social equitability by reacting to demographic shocks in an optimal way. In this paper, we augment DCC schemes with the assumption that the dependency ratio between pensioners and workers is driven by an exogenously modelled instantaneous stochastic rate of change. This assumption enjoys support from the empirical data and allows explicit solutions for the contribution and replacement rate processes which make transparent the nature of the dynamic evolution of a DCC system, as well as the role of the variables involved. The analysis of intergenerational social equitability measures under the assumption of an instantaneous dependency rate confirms the view expressed in previous literature that neither DB nor DC achieves social fairness, and that DCC plans have the potential to improve on both. We perform a calibration test, and our findings seem to indicate that in ageing economies the DC system might indeed be superior to the DB one in terms of intergenerational fairness.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (7) ◽  
pp. 1785-1814
Author(s):  
Pim B. Kastelein ◽  
Ward E. Romp

When the financial positions of pension funds worsen, regulations prescribe that pension funds reduce the gap between their assets (invested contributions) and their liabilities (accumulated pension promises). This paper quantifies the business cycle effects and distributional implications of various types of restoration policies. We extend a canonical New-Keynesian model with a tractable demographic structure and, as a novelty, a flexible pension fund framework. Fund participants accumulate inflation-indexed or non-indexed benefits and funding adequacy is restored by revaluing previously accumulated pension wealth (Defined Contribution (DC)) or changing the pension fund contribution rate on labor income (Defined Benefit (DB)). Economies with DC pension funds respond similarly to adverse capital quality shocks as economies without pension funds. DB pension funds, however, distort labor supply decisions and exacerbate economic fluctuations. While DB pension funds achieve intergenerational risk-sharing, welfare analyses indicate that the negative effects of the induced distortions are sizeable.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095892872110356
Author(s):  
Ville-Pekka Sorsa ◽  
Natascha van der Zwan

What makes a pension scheme sustainable? Most answers to this question have revolved around expert assessments of pension schemes’ affordability or adequacy. This study shifts focus from the financial or social sustainability of pension scheme designs to their political sustainability. Political sustainability refers to policymakers’ ability and willingness to sustain pension schemes in the face of perceived challenges. We seek to fill a key research gap concerning the political sustainability of pensions by highlighting the processes of parametric adjustment through which pension schemes are sustained. We show how capital, labour and state actors have been able to actively sustain collective defined benefit (DB) pension schemes in two coordinated market economies, Finland and the Netherlands. The two countries have managed to sustain their DB pensions for relatively long periods of time despite facing the same sustainability challenges that have motivated paradigmatic shifts in other pension systems. We find that sustaining has been successful thanks to a governance culture in which policymakers have been willing to keep all pension scheme parameters open for negotiation and an institutional context that made policymakers able to turn parametric pension reforms into power resources for further reforms. Our findings also explain recent changes in the Netherlands, which moved the Dutch system towards collective defined contribution pensions.


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