In a time before bonds, treasury notes, or central banks, there were tontines. These were schemes in which a group of investors lent money to a government, corporation, or king, similar to a modern-day loan syndicate. But unlike conventional debt, periodic interest payments were distributed only to survivors. As tontine nominees died, the income of survivors correspondingly increased. Morbid, perhaps, but this was one of the earliest forms of longevity insurance in which the pool shared the risk. Moshe A. Milevsky tells the story of the first tontine issued by the English government in 1693, known as King William's tontine, intended to finance the war against French King Louis XIV. He explains how tontines work, the financial and economic thinking behind them, as well as why they fell into disrepute. Milevsky concludes with a provocative argument that suitably modified tontines should be resurrected for twenty-first-century retirement income planning.
This open access book introduces the modern tontine and its applications in retirement and decumulation. Personal financial management in the later stages of life presents unique challenges, and renowned retirement planning expert Dr. Milevsky proposes the modern tontine as a solution. With the goal of guiding professionals and retirees in more efficient decumulation, the book demonstrates how to build a modern tontine. It is technically oriented, employing a cookbook format, featuring R code, and examining retirement planning through a statistical lens. This how-to guide, which is a sequel to his 2020 book “Retirement Income Recipes in R”, will be invaluable for retirement planning professionals and advisors, as well as for PhD scholars in retirement planning, quantitative finance, and related fields. This book is open access.
This book provides computational tools that readers can use to flourish in the retirement income industry. Each chapter describes recipe-like algorithms and explains how to implement them via simple scripts in the freely available R coding language. Students can use those skills to generate quantitative answers to the most common questions in retirement income planning, as well as to develop a deeper understanding of the finance and economics underlying the field itself. The book will be an excellent asset for experienced students who are interested in advanced wealth management, and specifically within courses that focus on holistic modeling of the retirement income process. The material will also be useful to current and future wealth management professionals within the financial services industry. Readers should have a solid understanding of financial principles, as well as a rudimentary background in economics and accounting.