Apr 3, 2023
The Tontine Puzzle
by An Chen and Manuel Rach
Abstract:
Under both normative and descriptive decision theory, tontines and tontine-related retirement income products have proven their superiority to classical annuity products. In the present paper, we show that benefits of a properly designed tontine dominate the benefits of an equally priced annuity as the pool size tends to infinity, leading individuals to prefer tontines with a sufficiently large pool size to annuities under utility preferences which are increasing and continuous in consumption. Such preferences include but are not limtied to cumulative prospect theory and generalized expected utility preferences, which we use as examples to illustrate our theoretical findings. Our results present an interesting puzzle which we call “tontine puzzle”, raising the question why the development of the tontine market is still in its infancy in practice.
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Tontine Trust is a fintech enabling consumer-friendly lifetime income retirement products such as the state of the art TontineIRA™ via banks, chartered trust companies and credit unions (each a ‘Bank’).
Banking, trustee and fiduciary services in the US are provided by partner Banks which are regulated in the US to act as fiduciaries on behalf of US Tontine IRA™ accountholders (‘members’).
Tontine Trust provides and operates the TontineIRA™ administration and record-keeping platform on behalf of and under the supervision of the Banks.
Tontine Trust is not a Bank or a trust company and does not provide banking & fiduciary services other than certain administrative services in a ministerial capacity as the Trust Advisors to the Tontine IRA™s.
No information on this website or the platforms provided by Tontine Trust should be taken as constituting individual advice to you. The information is informational and of general guidance only. Tontine Trust does not provide investment management services, financial advice, banking or fiduciary services.
The choices you make or do not make around the investment of your retirement account are your own responsibility. Neither Tontine Trust nor the Banks can be held responsible for any financial loss arising from your retirement choices or lack of them.
The amounts and duration of the lifetime income from the Tontine IRA™ are indicative only. By design, neither the amounts nor the duration of retirement income payments from a tontine plan are fixed or guaranteed.
Based upon many years of research and development, the TontineIRA™ platform displays reasonable best estimates of what level of income you can expect to receive over the course of your lifetime. These estimates are constantly reviewed (sometimes nightly) to incorporate any effects on expected incomes caused by changes in interest rates, investment returns, life expectancy and/or the actual mortality experience of members sharing the same tontine.
The Banks we work with are required to manage US trust assets in accordance with the Uniform Prudent Investor Act.
To ensure maximum security of capital and income for members, the Tontine IRA™ assets will be invested by the Banks in a basket of FDIC insured deposits such that each up Tontine IRA™ account can obtain FDIC coverage up to approximately $10m of assets per member.
Note that while the deposits made on behalf of the Tontine IRA™s are FDIC insured, the IRA accounts themselves are not a deposit or other obligation of, or guaranteed by a Bank or state chartered trust company and are not directly insured by the FDIC. Therefore they should be considered as being subject to investment risks, including a possible loss on the principal amount invested, for example when a member passes away before they have received total income in excess of their original contribution to the TontineIRA™.