Asset Allocation – Page 178
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Features
Focus on liabilities that safeguards future benefits
To win an individual country or themed IPE Award for pension fund excellence sets you up as something of a benchmark. To walk away with overall Best European Pension Fund Award 2005, however, means you are defining your industry. There can be no doubt Denmark’s ATP fund won this highly ...
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Basque fund develops venturesome role
Geroa EPSV is a defined contribution pension fund which was set up to complement the Spanish state pension scheme. It covers employees in Gipuzkoa, one of the three provinces making up the Basque Country region. The fund has 100,000 contributing members and is currently worth about €500m. Geroa was started ...
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Balancing risk and return to protect value of benefits
In recent years, liability-side issues have had a very substantial influence on Danish pension fund ATP’s investments. During the past year, therefore, ATP has radically changed its approach to liability-driven investments. Its work in splitting the investment portfolio into separate alpha, beta and liability hedge portfolios has helped ATP carry ...
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Don't look back
The Finnish pension system is still over-regulated and not structured in way that meets the long-term interests of pension funds. Lobbying has had some impact but as yet this is insufficient . It appears that the market has yet to convince its regulator that the idea that taking a forward-looking ...
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Joint award reflects range of skills and strengths
The aim of the Cepsa Group Pension Fund is to achieve adequate returns for the members and beneficiaries of the scheme, over the medium and long term and using a low risk profile. The fund defines ‘adequate’ as two to three points above the Spanish consumer price index. As a ...
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More attractive than ever
According to Jerome Booth at London-based specialist asset manager Ashmore: “In emerging markets, debt outperforms equities except in a rally, so the definition of an emerging market is one where the equity risk premium is negative.” While you may believe that his view is prejudiced since Ashmore is a leading ...
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Optimising asset structures
Following the substantial growth of its asset base, in 2002 WPV hired an independent consultant to conduct an asset/liability study for the first time. As a result of this study, WPV set up a master fund with Deutsche Asset Management (DeAM) comprising one passive and two active mandates. The scheme ...
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Demographics looming in Asia
The annual Asian Pension Fund Roundtable has established a reputation as a high level think-tank on best practice and corporate governance. Under the heading ‘Demographic pressures in Asia: Driving retirement system reform and capital market development’, this year’s event, held in Beijing, brought together representatives from pension funds, government agencies ...
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Three-pronged approach brings flexibility and focus
Danish pension fund ATP has won this year’s country award for its excellence in four main areas: investments, pension policy and liability side issues, overall objectives and risk tolerance, and dealing with the interdependence between these three areas. The fund believes that what distinguishes it from other pension funds is ...
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Difficult to apply
Behavioural finance achieved real respectability three years ago when Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for his work in this area. Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky are best known for their work on Prospect Theory. A simple rendering of this theory would be that people have an irrational tendency ...
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More questions than answers
How deep will the changes to the pension accounting rules go? How will they affect companies’ financial strategies? Will they trigger the termination of defined benefit (DB) plans in the private sector? These are just a few of the questions haunting the US pension funds’ industry after the Financial Accounting ...
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An alternative to ordinary mandatory insurance funds
The Frjálsi Pension Fund was established in 1978 and is one of the oldest and largest non-mandatory pension funds in Iceland, Traditionally, pension funds in Iceland have used all of the 10% mandatory contribution to provide coinsurance rights but the founders of the scheme wanted to create an alternative to ...
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Why pensions funds are on agenda
Over the last two years, the spotlight at investment banks has been directed towards pension funds. The banks have set up their own pensions groups to tackle the problems of liability mismatches and other risk issues. But if the banks serve corporate clients, how and why did they end up ...
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Life after attribution
Your managers may be investing in new risk and attribution capabilities, but are they ready for the knock-on effects? As an investor in the fixed income funds, you may not be too concerned with the relationship between your manager’s front, middle and back offices. As long as your funds are ...
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Risk manager or trusted adviser?
Across Europe, the pensions landscape is ostensibly one that conveys difficult and unwanted messages. Liabilities are typically large in comparison to the market capitalisation of sponsor companies. Schemes are generally poorly funded. From an adviser’s perspective, risks are also large due to the volatility arising from mis-matched asset mixes and ...
