Every other year for the past two decades, the Society of Actuaries has sponsored a 'speculative' fiction-writing contest for actuaries. The winners of this year's contest were announced yesterday.

Most of the workshops and discussions at the NAPA Summit in San Diego were devoted not to the pending DoL fiduciary proposal but to potential solutions to the problems that retirement plan advisors grapple with every working day.

Why do so many affluent retirees pinch pennies, when could enjoy life more? Sellers of annuities and long-term care insurance may be interested in the answers that Vanguard and a team of academics came up with.

“Purgatory is what I’m calling our set of forecasts,” said Ben Inker, GMO’s co-head of asset allocation, at the Morningstar Institutional Conference in Phoenix last week. “We won’t make much for seven years. But then we’ll see a steady rise to heaven.”