The presentation above is of the results of the first year’s purchases of SeLFIES in Brazil by the Brazilian public.
Brazil has got on with sourcing and implementing a solution to the problem of how to spend your retirement saving. It’s not my solution but it’s a way of doing things that people can understand and which can easily be adopted by any economy.
I take my hat off to Arun Muralidhar for his foresight and perseverance. He shows that things can get done, if there is courage and conviction. Here’s Arun’s abstract to the paper that is behind the concept. If you are interested in getting change done, you should get in touch with Arun
Arun Muralidhar
Co-Founder
Mcube Investment Technologies
Mobile: 1-646-591-6991
Absract
At a 2019 retirement security conference in Brazil, one of the authors proposed that Brazil introduce a low-cost, low-risk, simple and liquid bond innovation: “SeLFIES”— Standard of Living indexed, Forward-starting, Income-only Securities.
SeLFIES would serve as the relative safe asset for Defined Contribution (DC) retirement plans, thereby lowering DC retirement risk, especially in portfolios of uncovered and financially unsophisticated investors. Brazil was uniquely positioned globally to introduce SeLFIES/RendA+ (“Retirement Extra Income”) because Brazil has successfully implemented financial innovations such as Tesouro Direto, and has created a liquid, efficient, and long maturity IPCA-linked market.
From the presentation of SeLFIES in November 2019 to the Brazilian Treasury launching RendA+ in January 2023 was a mere 1165 days.
The idea behind these SeLFIES is explored in a previous blog, you can read about it here.
You can download the paper which accompanies the abstract (above) from here.
You can read a further paper from Arun on how SeLFIES could be adapted to provide a wage for life solution here. Arun’s invitation!
If folks want to hedge longevity risk, SeLFIES facilitates it as we show in the attached paper. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/
papers.cfm?abstract_id=3548319
And if you want Arun’s views on the Mansion House reforms and embracing market risk, here he is again.
I can speak to the mess in the DB industry with lousy investment strategies globally that make no sense – here is my warning for the looming mess as I bailed out a few funds in 2008 and this is 2008 on steroids – https://www.marketsgroup.org/
news/Arun-Muralidhar-managing- illiquid-risk. The idea of putting DC money in PE/VC/Private Credit is lunacy…
We need Arun’s energy and enthusiasm in this country now, we need better than the retirement options currently available after 7 years of pension freedoms.
I would not choose a SeLFIE for myself , but his idea is worth consideration as we struggle forward, it has the great advantage of a successful launch in Latin America.
