Startup organization Auctus is shaking up the intransparent and often shady pension market, by utilizing blockchain technology and Ethereum smart contracts.
Most individuals pay contributions to build up sufficient funds, to provide income for worryless retirement. The pension market is massive, according to various sources, total United States pension assets were standing at $19.1 trillion in 2016, while estimated global pension assets are estimated to be around $36 trillion as of 2016. The largest pension markets are the U.S. with 62%, followed by the United Kingdom (7.9 percent) and Japan (7.7 percent). According to a study conducted by Willis Towers Watson in 2017, Defined Benefit (DB) pension plans have grown at a rate of 2.6%, while Defined Contribution (DC) plans have experienced a more rapid, 5.6% growth annually.
However, the pension market has numerous flaws on various fronts, which often impacts individuals negatively. Common issues include poor governance and poor performance practices, problems within the collection of contributions – since there is no standard process for that -, hidden costs, poor data management and fraud. Fraud is a significant issue, according to the Financial Times, almost 20% of pension schemes reported fraudulent activity in the past two years.
This is where Auctus comes in. The organization is establishing solutions to the various problems surrounding the pension market, by implementing the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts to the process.
By decentralizing the platform and taking advantage of blockchain technology and its characteristics, the pension market will gain further transparency. With transparency, Auctus seeks to provide better governance on the company’s platform where everything is programmed into smart contracts. This way, regulators can easily run audits and participants can gain influence in the decision-making process. The Ethereum network and blockchain technology will be used to track and automatically collect contributions and pension payouts. Furthermore, as the platform is utilizing smart contracts for almost everything, the fees will be public and will be automatically deducted from the transactions. Ethereum smart contracts and blockchain technology also provides information transparency and immunity against fraud, which can be further increased by blockchain identity management solutions. Implementing blockchain technology will utilize decentralized data management, which is more secure and cost-effective than centralized data servers. Increased transparency also results in better control over pension estimates and actuarial assumptions, by making data public for everyone. Tokenizing the Auctus platform will provide additional efficiency regarding operational costs.
Auctus will hold a pre-sale starting from October 3, 2017 at 2PM GMT. The pre-sale will be live only for 72 hours and the participants have to register for the whitelist before September 30 on Auctus’ website. The maximum individual contribution is set at 10 ETH and the participants will receive 25% bonus on AUC tokens.
Auctus will also hold an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) between November 14, 2017 and November 28, 2017. Auctus will transfer all tokens immediately after the Token Sale ends.