Transparency in a World of Bribery?

To create a world that is less vulnerable to systemic risk, it's important that financial markets become more transparent.

One of the main issues in becoming transparent is the fact that there's still a lot of corruption in the world.

According to 'Transparency International', more than 1 in 4 people around the world report having paid a bribe.

The Netherlands
Even in a  perceived 'low bribery country' as The Netherlands, bribery is a serious issue that still isn't seriously approached. According a OECD report, The Netherlands is failing to vigorously pursue foreign bribery allegations and must do more to enforce its foreign bribery laws.

Fourteen out of 22 foreign bribery allegations have not triggered the opening of an investigation, calling into question the Netherlands’ ability and proactivity in investigating and prosecuting theses crimes.

Transparency Rules
It's useless to set up (financial) transparency rules (like in EMIR) if bribery is still a substantial part of our culture.

The 'Corruption Perceptions Index 2013' shows that even in countries where one would expect a low corruption rate, there's still a lot to improve. Despite of all actions and intentions: worldwide corruption still increases. Therefore it's time for action:

Words must be backed by action

The Corruption Perceptions Index scores 177 countries and territories on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Not one country has a perfect score. Two-third of all countries have a score below 50. This indicates a serious, worldwide corruption problem. Hover on the map above to see how your country fares.




What follows are the more detailed scores in a complete list of all countries. Just Scroll down to your own country to find out there's still room for improvement.




Finally 
It will not be easy to achieve an adequate transparency level in a world full of Bribery. Let's discuss what we - actuaries - can do to stimulate integrity and accountability, as these values are crucial to a more risk free world

Relevant links and Sources
- Institutions perceived by respondents to be among the most affected by corruption 
- Complete Oversight of Indexes
- Corruption by TOPIC
- OECD: Netherlands must significantly step up its foreign bribery enforcement
- Bribery Report The Netherlands

Happy 2014 !!!

Happy New Year to all Actuary-Info Readers!!

May 2014 become a fabulous Risk Management Year.

Wonderful Art by Rob Gonsalves ("Deluged").

 Link: Rob Gonsalves

What's your Pension Fund Confidence Level?

In my last blog I discussed the relationship between 'Fund Ratio' (FR) and 'Confidence Level' (CL), mainly for Dutch pension funds.

Some bloggers asked me to visualize this FR-CL relationship also for some other important pension countries.

From a Tilburg University thesis (2010) we can make a comparison. Not for all pensioen funds, but at least for some major public sector pension funds.

Here it is!

Although Dutch pension funds are still discussing whether they should cut existing pension rights or not , US and UK public sector pension funds still believe that as bad dreams have become reality, miracles can also happen!

"No!", my English business friend answered me, "I don't believe in miracles, I rely on them!" .

  

It still sounds as in the good old days, it's just the view that differs.....