A New Generation of Pension Fund Management

Robert C. Merton

Chapter | Innovations in Investment Management | 2008

A New Generation of Pension Fund Management

Abstract

In talking about pension plans at this point in American economic and corporate history, we need to discuss three linked issues: the defined-benefit (DB) corporate plans that worked for our parents; the defined-contribution (DC) plans we're getting today because corporations no longer want to bear the expense and risk of the DB plan; and how we can reshape the DC plan into something that feels more like a DB plan in the near future. Although this chapter focuses on a U.S. context and corporate pension plans, retirement and asset-management issues are a global challenge, and indeed, while the details vary across geopolitical borders, the fundamentals are shared by employers and employees across the globe. What's happening with the DB plan, why is it happening, and what are the implications for asset markets and asset management?

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Funds; Compensation and Benefits; Risk Management; Retirement; United States;

Format: Print

Citation:

Merton, Robert C. "A New Generation of Pension Fund Management." Chap. 1 in Innovations in Investment Management, edited by H. Gifford Fong, 1–17. JOIM Conference Series. New York: Bloomberg Press, 2008.

Working Paper | 2015

Customers and Investors: A Framework for Understanding Financial Institutions

Robert C. Merton and Robert T. Thakor

Financial institutions have both investors and customers. Investors, such as those who invest in stocks and bonds or private/public-sector guarantors of institutions, expect an appropriate risk-adjusted return in exchange for the financing and risk-bearing that they provide. Customers of a financial intermediary, in contrast, provide financing in exchange for a specific set of services, and do not want the fulfillment of these services to be contingent on the credit risk of the intermediary, even when they are not small, uninformed agents lacking in sophistication. This paper develops a framework that defines the roles of customers and investors in intermediaries, and uses the framework to provide an economic foundation for the aversion to intermediary credit risk on the part of its customers. It further explores the implications of this customer-investor nexus for a host of issues related to how contracts between financial intermediaries and their customers are structured and how risks are shared between them, as well as the consequences of (unexpected) deviations from the ex ante optimal contractual arrangement. We show that the optimality of insulating the customer from the credit risk of the intermediary explains various contractual arrangements, institutions, and regulatory practices observed in practice. Moreover, customers and investors are often intertwined in practice, and so this intertwining provides insights into the adoption of "too-big-to-fail" policies and bailouts by regulators in general. Finally, the approach taken here shows that financial crises may be a consequence of observed but unexpected deviations from the ex ante optimal risk-sharing arrangement between financial intermediaries and their customers.

Keywords: Financial Institutions;

Citation:

Merton, Robert C., and Robert T. Thakor. "Customers and Investors: A Framework for Understanding Financial Institutions." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 21258, June 2015. View Details

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Corporate America began to really take notice of the looming retirement crisis in the wake of the dot-com crash, when companies in major industries went bankrupt in large part because of their inability to meet their pension obligations. The result was an acceleration of America's shift away from employer-sponsored pension plans toward defined-contribution (DC) plans—epitomized by the ubiquitous 401(k)—which transfer the investment risk from the company to the employee. With that transfer has come a dangerous shift in investment focus, argues Nobel Laureate Robert C. Merton. Traditional pension plans were conceived and managed to provide members with a guaranteed income. And because that objective filtered right through the scheme, members thought of their benefits in those terms. Ask a member what her pension is worth and she'll reply with an income figure: "two-thirds of my final salary," for example. Most DC schemes, however, are designed and managed as investment accounts with the goal of accumulating the largest possible pot of savings. Communication with savers is framed entirely in terms of assets and returns. Ask a saver what his 401(k) is worth and you'll hear a cash amount and perhaps a lament to the value lost in the financial crisis. The trouble is that investment value and asset volatility are simply the wrong measures if your goal is to secure a particular future income. In this article, Merton explains a liability-driven investment strategy whose aim is to improve the probability of achieving a desired retirement income rather than to maximize the capital value of the savings.

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A New Generation of Pension Fund Management

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