한국 사적연금의 개혁방안

Abstract

Korean retirement pension system began in 2005 replacing the existing severance benefit, but now unergoes fading function of providing annuity for pension holders’ old age life safety together with the increasing weight of withdrawal and interim payment before maturity and tendency for lump sum payments instead of annuity by absolute majority of participants. Moreover, long-term performance of Korean retirement pension funds ranks the bottom in OECD member countries because of exceptionally high weight on guaranteed investment certificates among total invested assets. For the remedy of these bad situations, I suggest mandatory annuitization as a reform plan on the Korean retirement pensions benchmarking UK NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) and Australian Superannuation by introducing default options through which pension fund managers can invest global diversified assets without prior notice or permission from the participants and by replacing the existing three types of pensions of DB (defined benefit), DC (defined contribution), and IRP (individual retirement pension) with the newly designed fully funded collective DC (CDC) type pension system. Additionally, I recommend maintenance of exiting IRP typed funds with exposure of more competitive market conditions centering on the fund performances for the sake of transferers and resigners from their jobs without working until the retirement age. This reform plan on the retirement pension is expected to contribute to overall improvement of old age life stability with another reform on the NPS (National Pension System) which faces the future exhaustion of accumulated assets in 2055. In case of separation of Basic Income from NPS and formation of newly suggested welfare income supporting plan such as ‘Safety Income’ by combining this separated Basic Income, Public Aid comprised of Basic Living Recipients and Next Lower Income Earner, and EITC (earned income tax credit), the reform plan on the NPS can be easily achieved with increasing its pension contribution rate by only 3 percent point. I think average Korean pension income replacement ratio can be reached to more than 50% level if these two reform plans on each private and public pensions can be successfully completed.