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© International Federation of Pension Fund Administrators (FIAP) Av. 11 de Septiembre 2155, Tower C, Floor 9, Office 901, Providencia, Santiago, Chile Telephone: (56-2) 381 17 23 Fax: (56-2) 381 26 55 E-mail: [email protected] www.fiap.cl Edited and Published by: International Federation of Pension Fund Administrators (FIAP) © Developing the Potential of the Individually Funded Pension Systems 1st edition: 1,000 copies, 2010 Cover design: Verónica Muñoz/Raquel Yamal ISBN: 978-956-8853-05-1 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without due permis- sion, except in order to quote or comment. Each article is the exclusive responsibility of its author and does not necessarily reflect the opin- ion of the International Federation of Pension Fund Administrators (FIAP). Printed in the workshop of Imprenta Salesianos S.A. DEVELOPING THE potentiaL OF THE INDIVIDUALLY FUNDED PENSION systems Presentations given at the International Seminar “Developing the Potential of the Individually Funded Pension Systems” on May 6 and 7, 2010, in Viña del Mar, Chile. INDEX PRESENTATION: WELCOMING SPEECH 7 INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF PENSION FUND ADMINISTRATORS (FIAP) 15 LETTER FROM HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CHILE, MR. SEBASTIÁN PIÑERA 17 OPENING CEREMONY 21 INAUGURAL LECTURE I Sebastián Edwards. Crisis and Pensions: Lessons from the Global Financial Collapse 27 LECTURE II Felipe Kast. Challenges for Extending Coverage to Lower-Income Workers 41 LECTURE III Wenceslao Casares. How to innovate in a regulated industry 51 LECTURE IV Robert C. Merton. Observations on Individually Funded Pension System Design: Advances for the Future 61 PART I. HOW CAN THE COVERAGE OF THE INDIVIDUALLY FUNDED PROGRAMS BE EXTENDED? 77 Natalia Millán. The Pension System in Colombia: Challenges and Alternatives to increase Coverage 79 Eduardo Fuentes. Encouraging the Self-Employed to Contribute Voluntarily to the Pension Funds 105 Carlos Herrera. Subsidies on contributions: Mexico’s experience 123 PART II. NEW PRODUCTS 139 Joseph Ramos. New activities for the AFPs: unemployment insurance policies 141 Augusto Iglesias. Voluntary Pension Saving 163 Michael F. Cannon. Personal Medical Accounts: An Alternative to Compulsory Health Insurance 173 PART III. THE QUEST FOR EXCELLENCE 185 CHAPTER I. PENSION INFORMATION AND EDUCATION 187 Ross Jones. Pension Information and Organisation 189 Dariusz Stańko. Cases of information campaigns implemented by the industry 195 Solange Berstein. Pension information and education: cases of strategies and information campaigns run by the supervisory authorities 205 CHAPTER II. IDEAS FOR IMPROVING OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY 221 Lorenzo Larach. PreviRed: the Chilean Model of Contribution Collection by Internet 223 Miguel Gil-Mejía. Centralised Social Security Models: Experience of UNIPAGO in the Dominican Republic 235 Sergio Baeza. Reducing the Transaction Costs of Retirement Annuities in Chile 249 CHAPTER III. IDEAS FOR IMPROVING THE IMPACT OF INVESTMENT ON LOCAL ECONOMIES 259 Carlos Hurtado. Challenges for the regulations and policies of the public sector in infrastructure investment: the Chilean case 261 W. Britt Gwinner. Residential Real-Estate – Value after the Subprime Crisis 267 Helga Salinas. Credit for Micro-Businesses 275 CLOSING REMARKS 293 Guillermo Arthur 293 EARLIER FIAP PUBLICATIONS 295 6 H SPEEC G COMIN L WE PRESENTATION: WELCOMING SPEECH Madam Minister of Labour, Camila Merino, Madam Superintendent of Pensions, Solange Berstein, Mr President of the International Organisation of Pension Supervisors (IOPS), Ross Jones, Superintendents, Members of Congress from Mexico and Peru, dear friends from the Associations of Pension Fund Administrators that make up the International Federation of Pension Fund Administrators (FIAP): First of all, I want to extend a very warm welcome to you all at this meeting in Viña del Mar. You have come from great distances to accompany us in this new challenge: that of thinking about the development of the pension systems. A year ago we met in Warsaw in the midst of the economic crisis, which had seriously affected the valuation of the pension funds. The impact was so great that many nostalgic individuals began holding forth about a return to pay-as- you-go systems. The truth is that we pointed out in those moments that the analysis of Pension Funds must be carried out with a long-term criterion, because this is an 7 H SPEEC G PRESENTATION: COMIN L WE investment which is long-term by definition and is called upon to mature in 30 or 40 years. Even so, there was insistence to return to the so-called "Defined-Benefit" systems. However, events proved us right and we saw how the defined-benefit systems were hard-hit by the economic crisis, possibly with more virulence than the Individual Capitalization Funds, because the effects of the crisis were compounded by the demographic problem affecting the world. As a result, all the defined-benefit systems began to make parametric changes, which forced 57 countries to change the contribution rate to the pension system; 18 countries to postpone retiring age; and 28 countries to change their formula for calculating pensions. The question that needs to be asked then is, what remains for those defined- benefit systems? They offer undefined and uncertain benefits, which is natural, because the demographic pyramid has turned upside down and at this point in time it is impossible for a system of that type to provide an answer to the pension problem. By contrast, the individually-funded systems proved that they had greater strength to resist the crisis. Thus, between December 2008 and December 2009, 24 countries with funded systems, most of them members of FIAP, showed a 40% recovery. In other words, the funds increased by 40%, bringing them back to practically the same position as before the crisis. This proved how right we were in saying that analysis on these subjects must be carried out in the long term. But even more important than this is the fact that all the countries which have introduced reforms based on individual funding have had a weighted average yield of 8% since the systems came into being, which is extraordinarily important. We know from the rough calculations made that, with adequate contribution density, a yield of 4% would be sufficient to finance a pension of 8 DEVELOPING THE potentiaL OF THE INDIVIDUALLY FUNDED PENSION systeMS WELCOMING SPEECH GUILLERMO ARTHUR around 70% of the average wage, and we can already see that the yield to date has been double that 4% yield. We know that every point of increased yield on a fund means 20% more pension. This has been achieved by using very healthy criteria when investing the pension funds. We know that the yield and security of the funds are the investment criteria that constitute the very essence of any fiduciary administration. There can be no other criteria in investment decisions. However, even though the pension funds have followed those principles faithfully, they have still managed to make an immense contribution to the economic development of their countries, through their contribution to the whole process of saving and investment and certainly to a deepening of the capital markets. On certain occasions at FIAP meetings we have analysed the paper prepared by Vittorio Corbo and Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, in which it is stated that the Chilean pension system is responsible for 10% of the economic growth experienced by the country. 10% is explained by the contribution made by this system to the country’s economic development. Pension systems certainly face risks, which appear in both the accumulation and draw-down stages, and these are not investment risks alone. However, I believe that individually-funded systems have the flexibility needed to allow them to deal more effectively with such risks. The first risk that naturally appears is employment risk, which manifests itself in the changes that exist in the labour market and the irregularity of wages. These result in uncertain contribution density with which to face up to funding the future pension. There are, however, ways of mitigating that employment risk and one of them is to use multi-funds. 9 H SPEEC G PRESENTATION: COMIN L WE Multi-funds are an effective tool to enable people to adjust their investment in the different stages of life. When a person is young, it is possible to take on greater risks; when he/she is older, it is natural to move towards more conservative portfolios. Multi-fund schemes have been adopted already in Latin America by four countries: Chile, Peru and Mexico, plus Colombia, which will bring the scheme into effect next year. In Central and Eastern Europe, five countries have already implemented them: Slovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania. Undoubtedly, this is an enormous contribution, enabling workers to improve the performance of their savings in order to have better funding for their pensions. One thing that concerns us, and we have discussed it frequently, even with the regulators, is the inertia that may exist among workers who remain in a riskier fund, chosen when young, even when they are approaching retiring age. Fortunately, if we look at the funds the workers have chosen, we can see that they correspond quite closely to the criteria of the “Default Rule”. In other words, workers have chosen the fund that corresponds to their age according to the Default Rule, which confirms that workers do look for information, before choosing the most appropriate fund. An effective tool for facing up to employment risk is Voluntary Pension Saving. Certainly, in view of the irregularity of income and the cycles that every person faces in the course of his/her working life in terms of unemployment or lower wages, voluntary pension saving seems a very effective tool. We naturally hope that such voluntary pension saving will always have strong incentives, so that workers can make extraordinary savings at moments when they are receiving better wages, to cover those periods in the past when they did not have them and those periods when they will not have them in the future.