[sgbuffett]

You are viewing national pension policy making from the lenses of an individual investing for retirement.

A pension fund has a set of internationally recognized best practices on specific risk management requirements. These risk management practices do not appear out of thin air nor are they in practice because everyone who manages pension across the world is so dumb that he/she cannot think of an obvious no brainer solution like just buy S&P500 ETF. 

Both the examples you give are pure 100% US or heavily US weighted equity ETFs which are ill suited if we want to continue the current CPF risk-value proposition. Do note that even the Norwegian pension fund and Australian Super defaults are highly diversified across multiple asset classes and the Australian Super is quite clear that it functions more like a RSP with tax incentives rather than a government run DC pension plan.

The challenge is not coming up with funds that can generate >7%, but working under constraints required of a national pension program of our profile. This is different from thinking as an individual - you yourself can buy whatever equity funds you like, at the end of the day win or lose your problem and has no social implications.

Equity ETFs can tank big time during financial crises, what then is the CPF board supposed to do in those times? Tell the CPF members who happen to retire at that time too bad that the CPF sum you can withdraw has dropped 30% and just live with it? Or maybe just suck it up and continue to give out 7% - 10% interest rate to all members and top up the remaining 30% capital losses during withdrawal hoping that the downturn will pass soon? Individuals might be tempted to take the risk, but a national pension plan that affect millions of people cannot take on such a risk on the assumption that historically equities will bounce back sooner or later.

If its the former, then knowing herd behavior what will likely happen is this will spark a bank rush and motivate all sorts of ill-disciplined people to make a dash to exit through withdrawals, switch to CPFIS fixed income / gold, change to property etc. thereby aggravating the already bad situation and further damaging any prospect of ever reclaiming back the losses when the market recovers. Then what? Start to change policy and impose all sorts of restrictions to stop people from cashing out their money in all sorts of exotic ways? This will likely lead to another round of whining and bitching and possibly organized protests.

The converse also holds true, if CPF absorbs all losses and continues to promise a high interest and capital guaranteed withdrawals despite significant loses, then all sorts of funds will find all sorts of policy loopholes and tactics to come back and ride the free bandwagon thereby compounding the losses that comes from giving high subsidized returns. The whole thing becomes unfunded and a pure government subsidy program.

I am in agreement with CPFIS reforms to allow more flexibility for members to tailor their investments in more instruments including low management cost ones and also for the CPF to use its leverage to reduce/eliminate admin costs in the process, but this is a completely different proposition from the thread starter and what most Singaporeans want when they complain about CPF and want to change the "fund manager" of the CPF funds.

What people are really saying is this: Change a fund manager to manage all of our CPF monies, this fund manager should easily make 7% - 10% off our monies. This will then allow the CPF to raise interest rates to 7% - 10% consistently every year. It must be capital guaranteed, there should also be no change to policies concerning when and how much I can take back.

This is the deal killer. Based on my experience in the industry, even if CPF really go out and call for tender with the above requirements, no sane fund management company is going to take that up. It's not financially feasible.

You are right. I am speaking at personal level on how best to save for pensions.

There are pension funds of large scale that are managed to achieve good returns one example is Calpers. Like you said there will be years and periods of losses ...but they seem to be accepted by the stakeholders as part of long term pension fund management.