The adoption of an unified platform that pension funds could use to manage their operation with more transparency, lower costs and easier auditing and control would be of great advantage for employers, employees, managers and regulators. However, it would be necessary to create a transparency mechanism to prevent this platform to be controlled by an entity or group of people that was able to corrupt the system according to individual interests. This difficulty could be circumvented with the use of Blockchain technology.
The need to ensure transparency in the management of pension funds can be resolved through the use of blockades and the technology of smart contracts. Using blocking technology, you can cut costs, improve efficiency and automate the process of maintaining and auditing contracts related to pension funds.
With Auctus , the rules for managing and administering the pension fund, for example, the amount of pension benefits, the minimum contribution, the time of deferral of payments, the conditions for early payments, the distribution of amounts, conditions and amounts of lump sums or payments in connection with the difficulties encountered are reflected in “smart” contracts.
This applies to pension plans paid by the employer, here also the rules for the payment of savings and the rules for retirement are established in a smart contract. As for the management of financial resources, all limits on investments and commission fees will also be established in smart contracts, which makes it impossible for risk management of investments, misuse and collection of hidden commissions. In addition, it will be possible to create different investment profiles with different risk limits, in accordance with the preference of the participant in the pension fund.
The Auctus Project was born when an investment analyst with public pension fund experience joined forces with a group of software engineers and Blockchain enthusiasts to build a platform with the mission of improving the pension market by making it totally transparent and eliminating common problems such as bad governance, corruption, frauds, bribes, minimising the bureaucracy and lowering the costs, among other benefits that can be achieved with the use of the disruptive Ethereum technology and smart contracts.
The problems of the current funds
It is not difficult to find news of fraud and management problems in pension funds around the world. The life expectancy of the population is increasing, but the options of funds can not evolve to deal with the growing demand for registrations and options of funds to meet the new generation. Many of the current funds are managed with manual upgrade tools. Fund fees and returns are often not passed on transparently to the client. In addition, there are other serious problems like maladministration and fraud.
The main problems related to fraud in a pension fund include: employer who does not pay contributions, misappropriation of investment assets, undue payment of services, abuse of position, provision of pensions or payments, denial of pension benefits, hidden fees and manipulation of financial statements. In order to solve these problems, the Auctus team decided to develop a solution based on smart contracts to solve the problems related to the lack of transparency and, consequently, reliability of the pension funds.
Solution
The need for transparency in the management of pension funds can be solved by using blockchain and smart contracts technology. By using the blockchain technology it is possible to reduce costs, to increase efficiency and to automate the process of maintaining and auditing contracts related to the pension funds.
With Auctus, the rules of the pension fund plan such as retirement benefits, minimum contribution time, deferred compensation withdrawal including rollovers, early distribution, lump sum distribution and hardship withdrawals are stated in smart contracts. In the case of employer-sponsored plan, the contribution match calculation and vesting rules are also established in the smart contract code. As for the management of resources, all investment allocation limits and fee charges will also be established in smart contracts, making it impossible for investment managers to deviate funds and charge hidden fees. In addition, it will be possible to create different investment profiles with different allocation limits, according to the participant’s preference.
Through these mechanisms, regulators and participants can easily audit and control the performance of pension funds that use Auctus, avoiding frauds and possible losses due to mismanagement of resources. Governance mechanisms will be designed for greater participation of the members in the control of the allocation of resources, establishing, for example, the vote in election of the members of the board or to approve investment policy changes .
The use of smart contracts to process the use of resources, whether in the case of early redemption, portability or retirement, will make the process less expensive and faster. The retirement grant can be automatically triggered when the participant fills the requirements of the plan. Finally, with Auctus the participant can define the beneficiaries, who will receive the resources in case of death, calculated according to rules defined in smart contracts, facilitating family succession planning.
In the case of defined benefit plans, all plans must declare the actuarial methods and the calculation of the minimum funding requirement (MFR) and benefits in smart contracts. Although plans adopt different actuarial methods for this calculation, calculating through a smart contract directly provides transparency and all actuarial assumptions can be audited by participants and regulators
The advantages of blockchain and smart contracts
Blockchain technology has been gaining more and more space in the media, as well as being more studied, integrated with traditional forms of payment, and gradually falling to the attention of the general public. Although this technology (which is the working principle of Bitcoin and other so-called “digital currencies”) is currently receiving more attention as a form of investment due to the recent rapid valuation, blockchain has an application potential that goes far beyond transfer of values.
Ethereum, currently the second largest crypto-currency (in total market value), consists of a decentralized platform that enables the execution of smart contracts in the blockchain. Smart contracts are applications that run exactly as scheduled without the need or possibility of third party interference. The combination of blockchain and smart contracts enables the development of decentralized, distributed and transparent applications.
All this simply include
Full transparency;
● Easily auditable and compliant verifiable;
● Faster / automatic retirement process;
● Easier and faster portability to another pension fund;
● Multiple plan options with transparent rules:
Different investment profiles;
Purchase annuities;
Flexible drawdown;
Lump sum withdrawal (pre or post-retirement)
Transferring to another pension fund (pre-retirement)
HOW AUCTUS WILL WORK
With the platform developed within the Auctus project, it will be possible to define all the rules of retirement funds in smart contracts. Managing pension funds on the platform will make rules transparent and accessible to participants and regulators, and it is not possible to change terms or assumptions without creating a new contract. Smart contracts are dynamically generated and registered in the Ethereum blockchain at the time of registration of the fund, eliminating problems of hidden fees, fraud and altering rules in a way detrimental to the participant.
In addition, collecting contributions, employer compensation, collection of administrative fees and operations such as fund transfers become easier and more transparent, leading to greater security and reduction of costs related to management.
ABOUT ICO, TOKEN SALE AND DISTRIBUTION
The Auctus co-founders and team have been following the latest crowdsales (or initial coin offerings — ICOs) to gain perspective and learn from mistakes and successes. One recurring point of discussion and problem pointed by investors is that some companies are cashing out the Ether raised right after the token sale and placing downwards pressure on ETH price.
We believe our potential investors don’t wish to see us offloading all the ETH raised right after the sale ends. The success of our project and mission of bringing pension funds to the blockchain relies on the Ethereum network and the Auctus members strongly believe in the technology potential. We see this problem of ETH offloading as unhealthy for the market and also economically disadvantageous for our project, since we believe in long-term valuation of ETH and don’t see a reason to keep the company money that will be used to cover development, marketing, operations and other costs in fiat currency until the moment of actually spending it.
The Auctus Token Sale will be carried out through Ethereum smart contracts, and the token can be purchased only by sending ether to the contract address. To address the problem of offloading described above, the token sale smart contract will include a rule to lock the ETH. It will be released gradually based on our business budget plan. After the token sale ends we will be able to transfer only a small part of the ETH for the initial costs and the rest will be locked by the smart contract. We will provide the token sale smart contract address a few days before the sale begins, so it can be audited and viewed by the community. The contract will periodically unlock a defined amount of ETH allowing us to use it to trade it for fiat currency if necessary.
The token sale will be divided into two phases: a presale and the ICO. The first (presale) will be directed to early supporters with a significant bonus (to be announced) and the ETH raised during this phase will be used for the initial business set up, PR and marketing services, explainer video and prototyping. Tokens issued during the presale will not be transferable and will be converted to the Auctus Token (AUC) after the second phase (ICO) ends. In the second phase the ETH raised will be locked as described above, being gradually unlocked as defined in the contract schedule to be used according to our budget plan.
Token Presale Phase
Amount: 1,600,000 AUC (ICO Token Price will be 2000 AUC / 1 ETH)
Period: before and during ICO (Pre-sale: 3–10 October , ICO: 14–28 November)
Distribution: 1w after ICO ending (5 December)
Presale participants will be able to convert Pre-ICO tokens with the ICO smart contract corresponding function as soon as the ICO period ends.
The smart contract will be revealed a few days before the ICO allowing auditing of the locking rule. This is intended to make a responsible ICO and prevent ETH offloading and, also, revealing the contract early will help to avoid funds being sent to an incorrect address.
All funds raised will be locked during the ICO period. After the ICO period end, the contract will allow transferring at most 20% in the first month and 5% in the following, and this values are estimated considering minimum cap reached. If more than minimum is raised, it is likely that expenses will demand less than the allowed value each month, making the resources last longer.
Token allocation summary
Below are the links to auctus
official webpage: http://auctus.org/
facebook:https://www.facebook.com/AuctusProject
twitter: https://twitter.com/AuctusProject
slack: http://slack.auctus.org/
ANN thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2059117.0
telegram: http://t.me/auctusproject
My bitcointalk Profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1048662
My Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoKb8l6T6TN3dk9_9CvTnvw
