Nobel Prize winner to offer new ideas to address global retirement funding crisis

It is likely that you or someone you know is experiencing the retirement funding crisis first-hand. Perhaps you have pushed out your own retirement, not sure if you can retire comfortably. Maybe you are advising someone else, either through a career in finance or wealth management or helping a family member assess their financial readiness to retire.

While the impact of the retirement funding crisis becomes deeply personal, it also is a wide-scale systemic issue. It stems from people living longer but retiring at a fixed or only slightly later age than in the past, and other demographic shifts, along with changing retirement structures and economic factors.

Taking a close look at this growing worldwide challenge with local impact, Nobel Laureate Robert C. Merton will join the Belk College of Business on Friday, Nov. 14 at 5:30 p.m. for a public talk, “Toward a Good Longevity Experience.” The event at The Dubois Center at UNC Charlotte is open to the public at no charge. Registration is required. The event marks the 20th anniversary of the M.S. in Mathematical Finance program.

Merton — one of the founders of modern finance and risk management — received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new method to determine the value of derivatives, known as the Black-Scholes-Merton Model.

He is Distinguished Professor of Finance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Management and the John and Natty McArthur University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He is past president of the American Finance Association, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.