Title of the workshop:


"Improving the long-term sustainability of the Ukrainian pension system via investments in sustainable energy"

2nd June 2021

Workshop Session will be organized as zoom-meetings via Zoom-Link.

Access to the room will be available 15 minutes prior to the start of the conference (10:45 Central European Time).


The programme:




The Program can be downloaded by the link.


Description of the workshop:

In Ukraine, the state pension system is financed on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis, where current contributors cover current pension expenditure. At present, the Ukrainian pension fund experiences a huge deficit and, according to the country's demographic projections, this situation is expected to worsen in the future if no action is taken. In other European countries where the situation is similar, governments have already started to intervene and the common trend to mitigate the pension crisis is a wave of parametric adjustments, such as an increase in the retirement age or a decrease in the pension indexation. Meanwhile, the World Bank advocates mixed pension systems, mating PAYG and funding schemes, as a way to close the pension liability gap.

In the present project, we will address the question of designing a sustainable and adequate mixture of PAYG and funding. In this sense, adequacy, that is, the need to provide satisfactory pensions to individuals, is an issue especially in countries like Ukraine where pensioners are extremely poor. Since around 25% of the Ukrainian population (approx. 10 million people) lives below the official poverty line of $5.50 a day, such measures like increase of contributions or of retirement age do not seem realistic or sufficient to address the problems faced by the Ukrainian public pension system. Therefore, the aim of this workshop is to explore and assess whether returns from the funding part (for instance, investments in green energy) could increase the amount of pensions and at the same time guarantee the long-term sustainability of the system.

Alleviating poverty and reduction of inequality problems mentioned above are just some aspects of our current research. From a broader perspective, we also plan to design pension schemes hedging longevity and fertility risks, providing inter- and intragenerational fairness, sustainability and simultaneously optimising pensions’ amount. For instance, together with our industrial partner ms life, we are designing occupational and private pension products aimed to provide satisfactory pensions by simultaneously avoiding guarantees, which have been the major problem for pension insurers in the recent period of ultra-low interest rates. For Western European countries, we are investigating together with our collaborators from Germany some models for the state pension involving a credit possibility from the state.

In summary, the aim of this workshop, held for the next 2nd of June, is to explore and discuss the different possibilities for improving the Ukrainian pension system with a view to increasing the living conditions of its pensioners, both now and in the future. Thanks to the participation of renowned researchers, we hope that the debate will be fruitful and inspiring not only for other academics, but also for policy makers and society in general.


Keynote speakers:


1. Grigoriy Ovcharenko
Director, Head of Local Asset Management at ICU
ICU is an independent financial group that provides brokerage, asset management and investment advisory services and has a portfolio of venture capital investments. Grigoriy Ovcharenko joined ICU in 2016 as Head of Local Asset Management. In this role, he is responsible for all local asset management business including pension funds and cooperation with institutional investors. Since January 2020, Grigoriy has been the Chairman of the Board of the All-Ukrainian Association of Non-Governmental Pension Funds which contributes to the development of a funded pension system in Ukraine. The association unites funds that cover over 70% of non-governmental pension accounts in Ukraine. Grigoriy has been leading asset management and marketing organizations for more than 20 years. Prior to joining ICU, he was the CEO of OTP Capital and a board member of OTP Pension for more than six years. From 2007 to 2010, he was the CEO of Socrat Asset Management. During his tenure, Socrat was recognized as the top asset management firm in Ukraine (Euromoney, 2008). From 2000 to 2007, he directed marketing efforts for Altadis as head of the Ukrainian representative office.


2. Ole Settergren
Ole Settergren is the head of analysis at the Swedish Pensions Agency. Previously he was the head secretary of the government commission charged with setting up a unified Swedish Pension Agency. From 2004 to 2008, he was the director of the pensions department at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. As an insurance expert at the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (1995-2000), he proposed the automatic balance method of securing the financial stability of the new Swedish pension system. He developed the accounting principles that have been used since 2001 in the Annual Report of the Swedish Pension System and was its editor from 2001 to 2007


3. Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak
Professor Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak is a Vice Rector for Science at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics and a head of the Institute of Statistics and Demography. Twice a Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Policy as well as former Director of the Department of Economic Analyses and Forecasting in the same Ministry with responsibilities covering, among others the oversight of the social insurance system. A member of the pension reform team in Poland that prepared the changes implemented in 1999. As a consultant, she participated in numerous activities related to pension reforms in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, cooperating with the World Bank, ILO and the OECD. An author and co-author of many publications in the field of pensions and labour markets.


4. Roman Zinchenko
Roman Zinchenko - Ukrainian cleantech and smart energy evangelist, co-founder of Greencubator, head of energy committee at Ukrainian Venture Capital Association, sustainable entrepreneurship and communication trainer, visiting lectures at Lviv Business School of UCU. Since January 2017 Roman is the team leader for EBRD’s Climate Innovation Vouchers project managed by Greencubator. Roman advises green startups as well as corporates, and develops ecosystems for low-carbon entrepreneurship in Ukraine since 2009. He co-created TeslaCamp & Hack4Energy contests and brought to Ukraine international cleantech competitions, including ClimateLaunchpad and PowerUp.


5. Oleksandra Gumeniuk
Oleksandra Gumeniuk, Director of European-Ukrainian Energy Agency, which unites well-known international and national Ukrainian investors with a total investment of over 3.5 billion Euros in renewable energy in Ukraine, actively participates in working groups under the key stakeholders for the development of sustainable energy policy keeping the policy dialogue fruitful, is one of the signatories of the Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Ukraine for the renewable energy sector stabilization in 2020. Ms. Gumeniuk has a PhD in Economics and is experienced in managing international projects in energy, environment, and climate for more than six years and is keen to support Ukraine with its reforms in the frame of the Association Agreement with EU and other international agreements, which lead to the sustainable economic growth with less harm to the environment.


6. Oleg Terletskyi
Oleg Terletskyi holds a Master of Art Degree in Public Administration and Specialist Degree in International Economic Relations. He works for NGO “Center of Energy Initiatives” since its creation in 2001 on a part-time basis.Prior to joining CEI on a part-time basis in 2013, he worked in Public Sector of Ukraine for more than 16 years. His professional growth in NJSC “Naftogaz of Ukraine” started in 2001 when he was invited to manage the investment division of the Company. After 8 years work in the Naftogaz, he became an acting Head of Board of JSHC “Ukrnaftoproduct”. In 2010 as a Director of Department of Property Management and Reforms at the Ministry of fuel and energy of Ukraine, he was appointed by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine as the member of Supervisory Board of Naftogaz. He was also a member of the panel of the Ministry of fuel and energy. His work in the Ministry of fuel and energy of Ukraine was directly related with support of the Register of State assets in Fuel and Energy complex of Ukraine including Gas Transmission System of Ukraine.


7. Dmytro Nechyporenko
Since 2018, Dmytro Nechyporenko is the Business Development Director at Voltage Group, one of the leading EPC contractors for energy projects such as power substations, overhead and cable energy transmission lines 0.4 to 110 kV design and construction. Recently, he also joined the European-Ukrainian Energy Agency as a Board Member, thus contributing to the sustainable development of Ukraine's energy industry.


Organisers of the event:


Carmen Boado Penas
Dr. María del Carmen Boado-Penas holds a Ph.D. in Economics/Actuarial Science (Doctor Europeus and Extraordinary Award) from the University of Valencia (Spain) and a degree in Actuarial Sciences from the University of the Basque Country (Spain). She has also published several articles on public pension systems in prestigious international reviews and has cooperated on various projects related to pension systems at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency in Stockholm and at the Spanish Ministry of Labor and Immigration. She was also awarded a prize by the Foundation of Spanish Savings Banks for her PhD 'Instruments for improving the equity, transparency and sustainability of pay-as-you-go pension systems'. In 2020, she received the BBVA Longevia award (first prize on the economics section) to support pension research. Her research interests are focused on Notional Defined Contribution Accounts (NDCs), Actuarial Balance and Automatic Balance Mechanisms for the pay-as-you-go pension finance.


Julia Eisenberg
Currently on leave from the University of Liverpool. Dr. Eisenberg studied mathematics with economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She completed her Ph.D in mathematics at the University of Cologne under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hanspeter Schmidli, who was a renowned expert in the area of stochastic control theory in insurance. After obtaining her Ph.D with the dissertation “Optimal Control of Capital Injections by Reinsurance and Investments” (awarded with the first price of the German Actuarial Society), she joined Prof. Dr. Peter Grandits in his project “Optimization of Dividend Payments and Ruin Probabilities in Actuarial Mathematics” at the Vienna University of Technology, where she habilitated in 2019. Currently she is an Elise-Richter fellow, FWF (Austrian Science Fund), at the TU Wien, Austria.


Yuliya Mishura
Professor Yuliya Mishura is a Ukrainian mathematician specializing in probability theory and mathematical finance. She is the Head of the Department of Probability Theory, Statistics and Actuarial Mathematics at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Yuliya Mishura is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal "Modern Stochastics: Theory and Applications", together with Prof. K, Kubilius (Vilnius University); the Editor-in-Chief of the journal «Theory of Probability and Mathematical Statistics»; a Member of Editorial Board of journals «An International Journal of Probability and Stochastic Processes», «Statistics and Probability Letters», «Statistical Inference for Stochastic Processes», «Lithuanian Journal of Statistics» and others. 22 persons have taken Ph.D. in mathematics and 2 persons have taken the habilitation under the supervision of Professor Mishura.


Volodymyr Zubchenko
Candidate of sciences in physics and mathematics (PhD), Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. Lecturer of the courses in innovative entrepreneurship, economics, risk management, data science, statistical methods, business modeling, financial and actuarial mathematics, financial analysis. Director of Business School of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, “Science Park" Corporation. Business trainer, presenter, moderator – more than 2000 hours of trainings, educational programs, public speaking, master classes, webinars. Certified actuary (the expert in the mathematical methods in insurance and finance) – diploma of the British Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK), certificate of the National Commission for State Regulation of Financial Services Markets of Ukraine. The chairman of the Education committee of the Society of Actuaries of Ukraine.


CONTACT:

e-mail: ukraine@liverpool.ac.uk


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