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Focus on Funds: Preview of Global Retirement Savings Conference 2014
Focus on Funds
Preview of Global Retirement Savings Conference 2014
The April 25, 2014, edition of Focus on Funds discusses the agenda for an upcoming conference in Geneva, which will examine retirement savings challenges facing countries worldwide, as well as the role that investment funds can play in addressing these challenges.
Transcript
Stephanie Ortbals-Tibbs, Director, ICI Media Relations: Welcome to Focus on Funds, the Investment Company’s weekly roundup of industry news, ICI activities, and research findings.
Retirement and retirement savings…it’s an issue that stretches far beyond the borders of the United States and its savers to those worldwide. And ICI Global is picking up ICI’s important work in this area by convening a global dialogue on the issue. It begins with a conference in Geneva this summer. And I spoke with ICI Global Managing Director Dan Waters about the details.
Dan, ICI Global has been leading the beginning of a global dialogue on the role of funds in retirement savings worldwide. How is that dialogue continuing?
Dan Waters, ICI Global Managing Director: We’re following on the conference we held last year with another one in Geneva this June, which is called “Common Principles for a Diverse World.” And the themes of the conference are more detailed and deeper dives than what we did last year, which was kind of an overall bringing together of people from around the world.
Stephanie Ortbals-Tibbs: And you have some fantastic speakers and content on offer. Tell me about what’s planned.
Dan Waters: Indeed we do. We have Pablo Antolin, who is the principal economist at the OECD. He leads their work on private pensions, and they’re very influential at a global level in that debate. We’ve got Solange Berstein, who runs the Chilean Pension Supervisory Authority. They’ve had some very interesting experiences and experiments there, which have worked quite well. And, we also have Tim Jones, who is running the new NEST program in the United Kingdom.
Stephanie Ortbals-Tibbs: What do you think some of the takeaways will be at the end of it: what’s the goal?
Dan Waters: The goal is, as I said, to deep dive some particular issues so that we’ll be looking at the role of regulators in these DC pension arrangements that are being organized at a national level. We’ll be looking too at engaging with investors: the idea of their attitudes and how you best get them involved in realizing the importance of saving. That’s quite a big challenge. We’ll also be looking at the design of default funds, because the learning across the globe is that very often investors in these larger arrangements will just default into whatever is offered. They won’t chose. So, very important to get the design right. And, finally, we’ll also be looking at trying to design solutions over periods of time that meet the desire for certainty, if you would like, of outcomes. Quite a challenging agenda, but I think one that we’ll learn a lot from.
Stephanie Ortbals-Tibbs: That’s this week in funds. See you next week.