IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2411.13565.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intergenerational cross-subsidies in UK Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) funds

Author

Listed:
  • John Armstrong
  • James Dalby
  • Catherine Donnelly

Abstract

We evaluate the performance and level of intergenerational cross-subsidy in flat-accrual and dynamic-accrual collective defined contribution (CDC) schemes which have been designed to be compatible with UK legislation. In the flat-accrual scheme, all members accrue the benefits at the same rate irrespective of age. This captures the most significant feature of the Royal Mail Collective Pension Plan, which is currently the only UK CDC scheme. The dynamic-accrual schemes seeks to reduce intergenerational cross-subsidies by varying the rate of benefit-accrual in accordance to the age of members and the current funding level. We find that these CDC schemes can often be successful in smoothing pension outcomes post-retirement while outperforming a defined contribution scheme followed by annuity purchase at the point of retirement. However, this out-performance is not guaranteed in a flat-accrual scheme and there is little smoothing of projected pension outcomes before retirement. There are significant intergenerational cross-subsidies in the flat-accrual scheme. These qualitatively mirror the cross-subsidies seen in existing defined benefit schemes, but we find the magnitude of the cross-subsidies is much larger in flat accrual CDC schemes. The dynamic-accrual scheme design is intended to reduce such cross-subsidies, but we find they still arise due to the approximate pricing methodology used to determine the benefits accrued by each contribution. Although the cross-subsidies tend to cancel out over time, in any given year they can be large. Thus, the benefits accrued by contributions should be calculated rigorously to reduce cross-subsidies.

Suggested Citation

  • John Armstrong & James Dalby & Catherine Donnelly, 2024. "Intergenerational cross-subsidies in UK Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) funds," Papers 2411.13565, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2411.13565
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.13565
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sergio Alvares Maffra & John Armstrong & Teemu Pennanen, 2021. "Stochastic modeling of assets and liabilities with mortality risk," Scandinavian Actuarial Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2021(8), pages 695-725, September.
    2. Gollier, Christian, 2008. "Intergenerational risk-sharing and risk-taking of a pension fund," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1463-1485, June.
    3. Cui, Jiajia & Jong, Frank De & Ponds, Eduard, 2011. "Intergenerational risk sharing within funded pension schemes," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 1-29, January.
    4. Jan Bonenkamp & Ed Westerhout, 2014. "Intergenerational Risk Sharing and Endogenous Labour Supply within Funded Pension Schemes," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(323), pages 566-592, July.
    5. Harrison, J. Michael & Kreps, David M., 1979. "Martingales and arbitrage in multiperiod securities markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 381-408, June.
    6. Harrison, J. Michael & Pliska, Stanley R., 1981. "Martingales and stochastic integrals in the theory of continuous trading," Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 215-260, August.
    7. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcelo F. Perillo, 2021. "Valuación de Títulos de Deuda Indexados al Comportamiento de un Índice Accionario: Un Modelo sin Riesgo de Crédito," CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. 784, Universidad del CEMA.
    2. Bjork, Tomas, 2009. "Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780199574742.
    3. Anlong Li, 1992. "Binomial approximation in financial models: computational simplicity and convergence," Working Papers (Old Series) 9201, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    4. Timothy Johnson, 2015. "Reciprocity as a Foundation of Financial Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 43-67, September.
    5. Jamshidian, Farshid, 2008. "Numeraire Invariance and application to Option Pricing and Hedging," MPRA Paper 7167, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Björn Lutz, 2010. "Pricing of Derivatives on Mean-Reverting Assets," Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Springer, number 978-3-642-02909-7, December.
    7. Fergusson, Kevin, 2020. "Less-Expensive Valuation And Reserving Of Long-Dated Variable Annuities When Interest Rates And Mortality Rates Are Stochastic," ASTIN Bulletin, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(2), pages 381-417, May.
    8. Keppo, Jussi & Moscarini, Giuseppe & Smith, Lones, 2008. "The demand for information: More heat than light," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 21-50, January.
    9. Robert Elliott & Tak Siu, 2015. "Asset Pricing Using Trading Volumes in a Hidden Regime-Switching Environment," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 22(2), pages 133-149, May.
    10. Eric Ghysels & Andrew Harvey & Eric Renault, 1995. "Stochastic Volatility," CIRANO Working Papers 95s-49, CIRANO.
    11. A. Fiori Maccioni, 2011. "The risk neutral valuation paradox," Working Paper CRENoS 201112, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    12. Bossaerts, P. & Ghysels, E. & Gourieroux, C., 1996. "Arbitrage-Based Pricing when Volatility is Stochastic," Cahiers de recherche 9615, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    13. Sebastian Jaimungal, 2022. "Reinforcement learning and stochastic optimisation," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 103-129, January.
    14. repec:uts:finphd:40 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Zhu, Ke & Ling, Shiqing, 2015. "Model-based pricing for financial derivatives," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 187(2), pages 447-457.
    16. Geman, Hélyette, 2005. "From measure changes to time changes in asset pricing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 2701-2722, November.
    17. A Craig Burnside & Jeremy J Graveline, 2020. "On the Asset Market View of Exchange Rates," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(1), pages 239-260.
    18. Jin Zhang & Yi Xiang, 2008. "The implied volatility smirk," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 263-284.
    19. Hosam Ki & Byungwook Choi & Kook‐Hyun Chang & Miyoung Lee, 2005. "Option pricing under extended normal distribution," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(9), pages 845-871, September.
    20. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    21. W. Schachermayer, 1994. "Martingale Measures For Discrete‐Time Processes With Infinite Horizon," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(1), pages 25-55, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2411.13565. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.