Title:	Key Demographics in Retirement Risk Management
Authors:	Leroy O. Stone
Keywords:	Key Demographics
Issue Date:	2012
Publisher:	Springer
Description:	Since the dawn of the new century, there has been a steady stream of literature with the central theme that individuals and families face increased responsibilities in managing their retirement-related risks. At the same time, the task of achieving effective risk management has become more complex. In 2011, this theme could be found recurrently in the general media, as well as in documents issued by government agencies in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. In thinking about the increased responsibilities of individuals and families to manage retirement-related risks, fi nancial management and health issues come to mind. For decades, professionals have been providing services pertaining to these risks, and the related writings are voluminous. However, there has been little attention to what we call ‘comprehensive retirement-related risk management’. Here the word ‘comprehensive’ means more than simply a sequential list or collection of these activities. A new service offered by Manulife Financial (which they call ‘Product Allocation’) provides a useful illustration. The brochure for this service emphasizes that allocation strategy goes far beyond identifying a collection of assets to show the different avenues an individual or family might pursue regarding retirement savings. Essential to the strategy is the linkage of information concerning these avenues. This linkage allows pre-retirees to examine the overall pattern and raise questions about the sustainability of the savings programme as a whole. The pursuit of comprehensive retirement-related risk management involves linking information about risk management activities across multiple life domains. This helps persons to confront important questions about whether they have achieved the best available allocation of their scarce resources, and whether the priorities that they have established among alternative risks are the most helpful for their circumstances. We need to state only one reason why this is a signi fi cant idea in persons’ lives: the available resources are rarely suf fi cient to allow one to address all the apparent risks. It is not a new idea that people are spreading their scarce resources across an array of risk management activities. However, what is the proportion of individuals who are explicitly thinking about the patterns of their speci fi c arrays of risks, including the linkages among the risks? What is the proportion of individuals who are conscious of how their allocation of resources to one set of activities affects their capability to address risks in other areas? That is, although we all do risk management across several domains, for how many of us is the pattern of resource usage across risk management activities simply accidental?
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/51083
ISBN:	978-94-007-4044-0
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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