The Poverty Commission continued discussing retirement protection at its meeting today.
The meeting covered voluntary savings, which in Hong Kong's context include the voluntary contributions under the Mandatory Provident Fund Scheme and retirement savings-related insurance and other products.
There are currently 11 million effective life insurance policies, of which around 64% or 7 million is savings-related. A large proportion of these policies are believed to be retirement-related, and members noted that the life insurance market played a crucial role in strengthening retirement protection.
The commission also noted that the local annuity market was relatively small in contrast, which might be due to the lack of quality matching assets in the market for insurance companies to hedge against longevity and inflation risk.
Member CK Law also introduced his public annuity scheme proposal put forward in 2011, which the commission agreed to study further.
