With increasing longevity and decreasing fertility rates, governments and policy makers are increasingly engaged in the question of long term retirement planning. In many cases this has included emphasising the need for individuals to take more responsibility for their own retirement planning through tax incentives, compulsion and changes to the age at which state retirement benefits become available. In the case of Australia, as is considered here, long term retirement planning has been focused around the development of a compulsory defined contribution (DC) superannuation system.

Abstract - The world is entering a period in which the West’s postwar social welfare system is under growing threat as the global demographic structure is being turned upside down. And it is not just the West, but also China and other middle-income powers who will have to deal with an aging workforce and unsustainable health and pension costs in the next decade. For sub-Saharan African countries whose birthrates remain high, overpopulation carries big costs not only for them, but for the rest of the world, which will depend on them for a growing proportion of the world’s workforce.

Abstract - Weather and climate extremes cause huge economic damages and harm many lives each year (?35000/year). There is evidence that some types of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves and flooding, have already increased or intensified over the last few decades, and climate projections reveal a further intensification for many types of weather and climate extremes in many regions though the uncertainties still remain large.

Abstract - Climate change is a slow-moving process relative to many other public policy issues. Nonetheless, the future of the world’s climate system is likely to be heavily dependent on actions over the next few decades. Central banks across the globe are tasked with promoting monetary and financial stability and are quite used to thinking about the lags between policy action and effect.

Abstract - This paper examines the channels via which climate change and policies to mitigate it could affect a central bank’s ability to meet its monetary and financial stability objectives. We argue that two types of risks are particularly relevant for central banks. First, a weather-related natural disaster could trigger financial and macroeconomic instability if it severely damages the balance sheets of households, corporates, banks, and insurers (physical risks).

Abstract - This report presents a simple dynamic investment strategy that allows long-term passive investors to hedge climate risk without sacrificing financial returns. It illustrates how the tracking error can be virtually eliminated even for a low-carbon index with 50% less carbon footprint than its benchmark.

Abstract - Climate change represents a significant financial risk to the insurance industry, but research has yet to assess whether the industry is managing this risk. Through the application of scale as a vertically nested hierarchy of relationships, this paper seeks to evaluate whether insurers are ‘rescaling’ risk management practices to accommodate the temporal and spatial uncertainty associated with climate change. This framework is applied to a content analysis of 178 (183) responses to the 2012 (2015) U.S.

This report discusses why climate change is a risk facing defined contributions pensions - in terms of physical risk, transition risk and liability risk. It discusses two case studies - HSBC Bank (UK) Pension Scheme & NEST.

Update from the Wealth Management Sub-Committee of the Life Insurance and Wealth Practice Committee of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia

Having watched the growing politicisation of banking, aggressive media handling of the issues, and the continuing inability of the banks to push back, I am keen to offer a personal view of what banks might do to handle these problems. I am doing this partly out of frustration: I spent 13 years as CEO of a major domestic bank in Australia and since witnessed a deterioration in public trust and the seeming inability of bank boards and their executives to respond.