Retirement annuities: In it for the long haul
As average life expectancy increases, it’s more important than ever to start saving for the future, writes Johann Barnard
The job for pension fund managers to plan for 30 years into the future is not an easy one. And it becomes increasingly fraught when one considers the shifting goalpost created by their clients’ longer average life expectancy.Retirement years are now almost as long as working-age years. Naturally, investment strategies and the ways in which retirement products are structured have adapted as a result.Longer average life spans also offer the opportunity to work for longer, and therefore to put those productive years to good use by saving in that time.But even if investors work and save for longer, future returns are likely to be more muted than they were in the period leading up to the global financial crisis. Many veteran investors will look back longingly to a little more than a decade ago, when the commodities boom was propelling the local market to record annual returns upwards of 20%."The returns SA investors experienced in the decade preceding 2008 were abnormal relative to long-...
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