Retirement

Investment News columnist Darla Mercado wrote an interesting piece of the difficulty of making meaningful comparisons among annuities and related retirement income products. Mercado focuses on the challenges created by the lack of benchmarks in the retirement income industry. Unlike the investment industry where benchmarking and transparency of product features are standard, lifetime income products are opaque and complex. Mercado examines the defined contribution plan sponsor market where...

The UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education just released an interesting research report titled “Meeting California’s Retirement Security Challenge.” The report has an introduction written by Jacob Hacker—a Political Science professor at Yale University. Hacker’s introduction focuses on what he refers to as the “Great Risk Shift” and is appropriately titled “The Coming Age of Retirement Insecurity.” The viability of defined...