The problem has two sides. On the one hand there's finance where some people are taking risks, creating instability that will mostly hit every day folks when things blow up.
But on the other side are those every day folks. They want their pension money to gain a profit each year so they'll have a decent pension when they retire. At the very least it should match inflation but preferably a bit extra.
Investing money (almost) without taking risk is possible but you'd have to stall all the money at the ECB or some other central bank, and until recently you'd have to pay a negative interest rate. This wouldn't make pension holders very happy.
So pension fund managers take risks. They surely take as little risk as possible and they are excellent in picking opportunities that give a comparatively high yield for their risk: but they are taking a risk, otherwise they would never come close to beating inflation.
And sometimes the risk blows up, and everybody is all upset. It's easy to blame those filthy rich fund managers but people should also look into the mirror sometimes.
[1] points out that you can have a perfectly boring, safe pension fund by investing all the money into gilts with positive interest rates which means you only need to put in £48 now to get £100 in 30 years.
But on the other side are those every day folks. They want their pension money to gain a profit each year so they'll have a decent pension when they retire. At the very least it should match inflation but preferably a bit extra.
Investing money (almost) without taking risk is possible but you'd have to stall all the money at the ECB or some other central bank, and until recently you'd have to pay a negative interest rate. This wouldn't make pension holders very happy. So pension fund managers take risks. They surely take as little risk as possible and they are excellent in picking opportunities that give a comparatively high yield for their risk: but they are taking a risk, otherwise they would never come close to beating inflation.
And sometimes the risk blows up, and everybody is all upset. It's easy to blame those filthy rich fund managers but people should also look into the mirror sometimes.