The World Pension Alliance (WPA) published the paper on ‘2020 Global Regulatory Responses and Pension Fund Challenges Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic’, providing an overview of the challenges that both pension funds and pension plan members faced during 2020 and promoting the adoption of policies with a long-term view toward retirement security. The research underlines the damaging effects of specific policies such as pension withdrawals, without overlooking the current difficult situation of many workers all over the globe. With that in mind, the paper summarizes the challenges and global regulatory efforts in response to COVID-19 made in 2020 in different regions around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and provides a brief analysis on sector developments since the beginning of the pandemic.
Even more so during the current pandemic crisis, pension funds serve a significant social function in supporting economies and citizens. They ensure benefits for old age income while they work as automatic stabilizers in times of economic strain. Because employers’ and employees’ representatives are involved in the management of workplace pension schemes, such schemes help to promote transparency, inclusiveness, and democratic legitimacy. Most notably, pension funds are important institutional investors and can foster long-term investment and sustainable economic growth while maintaining financial stability. They often act countercyclically by maintaining their long-term strategic asset allocation in stressed market conditions, in that they rebalance and buy assets whose prices have diminished abruptly.
The broad policy recommendations in the paper can be found here, whereas the paper can be downloaded here.
