Cross Border Benefits Alliance Europe was launched on 6 December 2017 in Brussels, and advocates and lobbies for easing cross border pensions and benefits across EU borders. They hold an annual plenary conference in Brussels each year and hold local seminars and meetings such as this one, in different cities in the European Union.

We are ten years on from the Financial Crisis and I’m sure many readers of this article will think of the television pictures of the Lehman Brothers‘ bankers clearing their desks into cardboard boxes and leaving their building on 14 September 2008. That was one of the immediate physical manifestations of the crisis that had started in 2007 and whose root cause were the losses in the US sub-prime crisis (see “The Big Short” movie for a full explanation of it). But what exactly is the legacy of the Financial Crisis? It is tempting to answer, like others have done to past revolutions, that it’s too early to tell…

The mandatory pension plan in Mexico is, as of today, a Defined Contribution (DC) type. This plan was formally introduced in 1997; before this, the mandatory pension plan was a Defined Benefit (DB) type on a PAY-AS-YOU-GO basis. Workers who entered this mandatory pension plan after July 1, 1997 had to join the new plan. On the other hand, workers who were already in the labour market before that date could choose between either of the plans to retire.

For over a century, we have relied on a simplistic measure to determine if someone is a “healthy” weight or not. This is the body mass index (BMI) – the ratio of a person’s weight to the square of their height. The limits of this ratio are clearly demonstrated by professional rugby players; most of whom would be classified as “overweight”, despite having less than 10% body fat.