Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Observations on Innovation
In Pension Fund Management
In the Impending Future
Portions of the edited keynote speech given by Robert Merton at the 2005 NCREIF-PREA Fall Conference
Robert C. Merton, Ph.D., is the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard
Business School. He is past president of the American Finance Association and a member
of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1997, Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences.
This morning I will offer some observations on the role of fully developed financial systems has experienced a major The shift
financial science and financial innovation in influencing secular trend of disaggregation—some call it disinterme-
the evolving practice of providing retirement benefits and diation—of financial services, including pension services. to DC is not ...
dynamic pension portfolio management. Households today are called on to make a wide range of the long-run
New financial product and market designs, improved important and detailed financial decisions they did not
have to in the past. Among the most significant examples
answer.
computer and telecommunication technologies, and
advances in the theory of finance during the past quarter in both developed and emerging countries is the strong
century have led to dramatic and rapid changes in the trend away from defined-benefit (DB) corporate pen-
structure of global financial markets and institutions. sion plans, which require no management decisions by
The scientific breakthroughs in financial engineering in the employee, toward defined-contribution (DC) plans,
this period both shaped and were shaped by the extraor- which certainly do. This trend away from DB and toward
dinary flow of financial innovation that coincided with individual employee-managed retirement accounts is
those changes. The cumulative impact has significantly happening now because of accounting changes, equity
affected all of us—as users, producers, and overseers of market behavior post the 1990s, low inflation, and the
the financial system—most importantly in long-horizon impending baby boomer retirement demographics, all
asset management providing for retirement benefits. of which are making transparent that the cost of these
The view of the future of financial practices in retire- DB plans is much larger than had been understood in
ment investing and services, as elsewhere in the eco- the past.
nomic sphere, is clouded with significant uncertainties. The shift to DC is not, however, the long-run answer.
With this in mind, I will nevertheless try to describe In the United States alone, there are more than 9,000
prospective future trends in pension products and service mutual funds and a vast array of other retail investment
design and the innovations to support their implementa- products to choose from. Along with insurance products
tion. My remarks will address three topics: (1) What are and liquidity services, the household faces a daunting
the challenges to pension plan design today in delivering task to assemble these various components into a coher-
the retirement part of the household life cycle? (2) What ent, effective lifetime financial plan. Some see this trend
are the directions for plan design improvements to meet of disaggregation continuing and widening. Perhaps so,
these challenges in the impending future, with emphasis especially in the more immediate future with the wide-
on the risks that are not being taken into account in cur- spread growth of relatively inexpensive Internet access to
rent practice? (3) How can derivative securities and other so-called financial advice engines. However, the creation
investment management innovations improve the effec- of all these alternatives combined with the deregulation
tiveness of the production of pension benefits? needed to make them possible has consequences. Deep
and wide-ranging disaggregation has left households with
Challenges to Pension Plan Design: DB and DC the responsibility for making important and technologi-
Some trends are already well under way. As a result of cally complex micro financial decisions involving risk.
major technological innovation and widespread de- The essence of the current challenge is thus: Defined
regulation, the household sector of users in the more benefit is expensive to the sponsor, but its beneficiaries