75 percent of U.S. employees believe their health plan has never alerted them to a health risk, according to the HealthMine 2018 Rising Risk Survey that underscores the challenges health care plans face when educating members about potential health risks and when motivating them to take action to prevent becoming ill. Bryce Williams, President and CEO of HealthMine, pointed out that 86 percent of the US$2.7 trillion annual health

The Transamerica Center for Health Studies (TCHS), together with the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces (ICHW) at UC Berkeley, in February 2018 released their guide, Finding Fit: Implementing Workplace Wellness Programs Successfully, which is a helpful resource for organizations offering wellness programs for their employees. The employer guide features an emphasis on small and medium organizations and focuses on the types of wellness programs that have been shown to

Pricewaterhouse Cooper (PwC) in February 2018 released a report, What will Work Look Like in 2030?  that takes a look at the future of the workplace. The report asks the reader to imagine ‘four radically different scenarios for how companies will manage people and how people will manage their work and careers. Authors Jeff Hesse and Scott Olsen write, ‘We are living through a fundamental transformation in the way

Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory U.S. in January 2018 announced the release of a new white paper: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Will Present Retirement, Benefits, Executive Compensation and Payroll Professionals with New Challenges in 2018, which examines the impacts of the tax bill recently signed into law by President Trump. The white paper looks at aspects of the new law, which will affect a wide range of retirement,

‘Why is it so unpopular,’ the editorial asks, ‘to work longer even among people with longer life expectancy and in good health? Is the proposition of retirement and leisure so much more attractive than work, even if working longer is rewarded with higher pensions? Does it perhaps make no economic sense to work longer? Or are people being pushed out of work by their employers who do not see

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that between 291,000 and 646,000 people worldwide will die from seasonal influenza-related respiratory illnesses each year, higher than a previous estimate of 250,000 to 500,000. These findings are based on a multinational survey from a collaborative study by CDC and global health partners. The study appeared in a December 2017 issue of The Lancet. The new estimates, which exclude deaths

The Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) has released a report that provides ‘a series of policy recommendations aimed at enhancing the contribution of the cyber insurance market to managing increasingly prevalent risk’. The report, based on questionnaire responses culled from insurers, reinsurers, and brokers active in the global market, as well as the ministries of finance and insurance regulators responsible for overseeing that market, identifies the growing cyber risk

Thomsons, the company behind the online benefits platform Darwin and a member of Mercer, in December 2017 released its Global Employee Benefits Watch Report 2017/8 entitled “The next wave of globalization and digitization.” The report focuses on the pace and scale of change in the global benefits market and especially the importance of the adoption of a technology infrastructure which is “three times more likely to see a reduction

Pensions at a Glance 2017, a new report issued in December 2017 by the OECD, warns that further reforms are needed across OECD countries to mitigate the impact of population aging, increasing inequality among the elderly and changing the nature of work. The OECD also says that public spending on pensions for the OECD as a whole has risen by about 1.5% of GDP since 2000; however, the pace

Deloitte in December 2017 released three reports discussing potential developments in the insurance industry for 2018 and beyond. 2018 Insurance Industry Outlook – Industry trends, strategies to stay competitive Page with link to report 2018 U.S. Insurance Regulatory Outlook – Forging ahead amid uncertainty Page with link to report IAIS update: 2017 annual meeting – Insurance supervisors focus on risk and regulatory standards Page with link to report The

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s report, Technology and Pensions, was released in December 2017, providing an overview of how technology (FinTech) is being used to improve pension design and delivery and how regulators are managing these changes. The report comes after a discussion on the challenges that regulators face to support FinTech from a roundtable held at the G20/OECD Task Force on Financial Consumer Protection meeting held

Governments in Paris, Berlin, London, Madrid, and Rome sent a joint letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin in mid-December 2017 warning him of the risk of tax treaty violations arising from the tax reform under discussion in the United States. If Donald Trump is relying heavily on the tax reform submitted to Congress in autumn − to rebuild his image − he is sending shudders through

Randstad North America, a global provider of HR services, in December 2017 released its 4th Quarter Talent Trends Quarterly, an analysis of current hiring and workplace trends that will impact the U.S. workplace in 2018 and beyond. The report opens with a warning to human capital and business leaders: ‘embrace change to (their workforce’s) advantage or potentially fall behind’, and recommends that employers ‘become more agile, open, and flexible

The Organization for Economic Development (OECD), in December 2017 released a new report, Robo-Advice for Pensions, which looks at the rising trend of technological innovation in finance, specifically the robo-advice model. This model has been proposed as one potential solution for helping individuals manage pensions and invest for retirement. Essentially, ‘robo-advisors’ propose to make investing more affordable and accessible for consumers by relying on user-friendly digital platforms, algorithms, and

UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in December 2017 launched its annual Handbook of Statistics to celebrate its fiftieth year of publication. The 2017 edition has been overhauled, making it user-friendly, and features a wealth of maps, charts, and infographics. Of particular interest to anyone involved in global mobility or multinational business, the Handbook provides a coherent overview of trends worldwide, as well as novel summary

Employee benefit consultants (EBCs) are forecasting market growth for the United Kingdom, despite concerns about major challenges from newly-introduced data regulations and the impact of Brexit. New research* published in November 2017 by MetLife Employee Benefits shows that more than two out of five consultants (42%) expect their businesses to grow over the next year and another 41% believe they will, at the very least, stand still. Just 13%

According to early versions of the 2018 U.S. budget that in November 2017 is making its way through the legislative process, a new 20% excise tax is to be introduced. The tax shall apply to almost all payments made by U.S. companies to non-U.S. affiliates of the same group (an “international financial reporting group”: subsidiaries, parents companies, and sister companies). The tax will not be deductible from U.S. corporate

U.S. employer premiums rose an average of 6.6 percent in the first three fiscal quarters of 2017, according to the 2017 United Benefit Advisors (UBA) Health Plan Survey released on 26 October. This is a significant increase from the five-year average increase of 5.6%. Two states, Connecticut and New York, saw stunning increases of 24% and 14% respectively, while some states, such as Arizona and Washington, saw decreases of

China in November 2017 announced it would lift the current foreign ownership cap for life insurance companies to 51 percent in 2020 and remove the limit altogether two years later. Other segments of the financial industry will see their limits relaxed even earlier. The limits for fund management companies and for securities ventures will be raised this year to 51 percent, then completely removed in three years, whereas banks

Bug Insights’ human resources analytics and rewards optimization offering in November 2017 was acquired by Deloitte Consulting. Viewed as a critical step on the journey to creating a total relationship with employees, the offering allows employers the ability to determine what their employees value most from their rewards programs. It leverages trade-off analysis and employee preference measurements to give companies specific information about their employees’ attitudes, helping to design

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in October 2017 released a white-paper entitled Computers and the Future of Skill Demand. The study provides insights into current computer capabilities with respect to certain human skills, and what this portends for the future workplace. The report is the culmination of an exploratory project that focused on understanding current computer capabilities with respect to the three general cognitive skills needed

Job website Glassdoor in October 2017 released a study that determines that three in four full- or part-time employees get fewer than 8 hours of sleep per night, averaging just 6.9 hours of sleep. This is below the recommended 7-9 hours per night that are understood to be required for people to function at their very best. Conducted by Harris Poll in late March and early April 2017 among

Global insurance company XL Catlin issued their Q3 2017 October report, Emerging risks we’re watching and why, which highlights key factors in emerging risks presented by new state medical marijuana laws in the U.S. and the ongoing North American opioid epidemic. Of particular note is the marked reduction of the North American workforce as a result of the opioid epidemic. The Federal Reserve has cited the epidemic as one

Gen Z consumers (i.e., people aged 18-21) are surprisingly more likely than any other age group, including Baby Boomers, to visit a bank branch at least weekly, according to a study from Accenture released in October 2017 – reflecting the heavy cash dependence within their age cohort. The study also found that Gen Z consumers are the most active and engaged group using mobile banking, with all other consumers

A study released in Octover 2017 by the U.S.-based Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) reports that 30 percent of college-educated employees working full time in white-collar professions in the U.S. have some sort of disability. The report, Disabilities and Inclusion, uses the new (as of 2016), broader U.S. federal definition of disabilities, which includes mental health and chronic conditions, and concludes that employers far too often overlook the enormous

U.S. life insurance company Northwestern Mutual (NM) has released its 2017 Planning & Progress Study, which pinpoints healthcare costs as the biggest obstacle to attaining financial security in retirement for Americans. In fact, there has been a significant increase in the number of Americans citing healthcare costs as their chief concerns (from 45% in 2016 to 58% in 2017). Lack of savings (44%) and uncertainty over Social Security (31%)

The Pensions & Investments (P&I) Research Center in October 2017 announced that it has just added data about pension risk transfers (PRTs) to a new database that contains details on more than 200 transactions over the past five years. The vast majority of the transactions in the database occurred in the U.S. and in the U.K.. These transactions represent more than $200 billion in liabilities that have been moved