Pension funds
Pension funds offers retirement income in the form of annuities to employees covered by a pension plan. They obtain contributions from employers or employees and invest these amounts in corporate bonds and stocks. There are private pension funds in addition to public pension funds. The US government has endorsed the establishment of pension funds and the expectation is of further developments in pension funds in terms of number and variety of options. In some countries pensions funds are extremely important (example USA and UK) whereas elsewhere they are not (e.g. France, Germany and Italy), because of the different importance of State pension schemes.
Activity 2.4
What category of pensions are there? Do you at present understand how a pension fund operates? Glance in Mishkin and Eakins (2009) to make sure. Successive to reading Mishkin and Eakins (2009) do you believe pension funds are financial intermediaries that is do they channel funds from saver-lenders to spender-borrowers?