Asset Allocation – Page 168
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Features
New environment for pensions
Following the law on pension reform in 2003, the different regulations that we were all waiting for have finally been published. The result is a much clearer (and attractive) pension environment than before. Companies can sponsor three tax-favoured retirement systems – traditional DC and DB plans, and the new locked-in ...
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Features
Driven to short-term views
Some 10 years ago, remembers Mn Services interim commercial director Pieter Kiveron, finance minister Gerrit Zalm was quoted as advising pension fund managers to make sure that there were four of them because then they could at least play cards. The implication was that otherwise they would have very little ...
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Features
Positive currents in DC market
More retirement savings, easier investment choices, lower management fees. A worker’s dream? No it is not, according to recent research about new trends in US defined contribution (DC) plans. Thanks to regulatory and market pressures, in 2006 DC plans, like 401(k)s, will conquer more participants and will be more understandable. ...
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Features
Proving FRR's credentials
Almost five years after its creation, the French Fonds de reserve des retraites (FRR) has experienced only one full real year of financial management, in 2005. Let’s remind a brief history of the FRR. France, like many others, has to face a retirement problem with its existing system being unable ...
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Features
Europe on slow crawl upward
Yield curve/duration The ECB duly raised its Refi rate to 2.5% on 2 March, a move which came as no surprise to market participants. What had more influence on the short end of the yield curve were comments from the ECB. Firstly, president Trichet said the bank was “ready to ...
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Features
Gearing up for changes
In an unguarded moment during a visit to New Zealand last year prime minister Göran Persson told a local interviewer that if the younger generation in Sweden really understood what the country’s new pension system meant in terms of a final pension they would not have accepted it. Although a ...
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Features
Broadening the perspective
Quelle année? Ah yes, 2004. A particularly good year. Now, more than a year on from the requests for proposal issued by the Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR) the impact on the market is clear. A gradual maturing of attitudes and approach received a massive boost from the ...
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Features
Making the breakthrough
In 2000 the Taxation of Pension Investment Returns Act was introduced in Denmark. Like a good new year’s resolution it promised a simpler taxation regime for all, and a gateway for foreign asset managers wishing to break into the domestic Danish market. Five years of freedom have seen major growth ...
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Features
How to benchmark pension fund costs
It is, suggests Richard Stroud, chief executive of the UK’s Pension Trust, a question of being able to compare like for like. Take grocery shopping. UK Supermarket retailers Tesco and Asda compare their prices in order to attract customers. Why shouldn’t investment managers and third party administrators do the same, ...
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Features
Going in alternatives direction
IPE asked three pension funds – in the UK, Belgium and Finland – the same question: ‘Do alternative asset classes serve a useful purpose or are they too complex and too expensive?’ Here are their answers: Richard Stroud, chief executive at The Pensions Trust, which has AUM of £3.3bn ...
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Features
Actuaries take on piloting role
For French companies, the financial year 2005 is the first year of compulsory use of the new international accounting rule IAS 19. In the meantime, the European directive on Institutions for Retirement Provision leads to more actuarial services, pension actuaries are concerned in some specifically French benefits such as as ...
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Features
EU action may boost funds
With the exception of Italy, Denmark and Sweden, all EU member states apply either the EET or the TEE system to pension taxation. EET means that the pension contributions are ‘exempt’, that is the contributions are deductible from the taxable income, the investment results of the fund itself are also ...
