Asset Allocation – Page 240
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Features
Overcoming the admin hiatus
The opening up of the market for providers of administration outsourcing to European pension schemes is one of those areas where much of the talk has yet to be followed by action. While the rationale for the outsourcing of the ‘back office’ has been successfully argued and won in many ...
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Features
Alternatives manager
PGGM, the e47bn pension fund for the health care and social work sector, has promoted its head of real estate Jan van der Vlist to oversee its alternative investments. The Dutch fund recently brought real estate, private equity investments, mortgages and absolute return funds under one umbrella and renamed them ...
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Features
DC benefits both sides
Banks and financial institutions have been in the vanguard of the move to DC pension plans in Ireland. AIB Group closed its DB scheme to new entrants at the end of 1997 and launched a DC scheme in 1998. The DC scheme now has almost 5,000 active members in Ireland ...
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Features
Doing business with the family
When looking to outsource, pension funds are increasingly being given a new opportunity to have their asset management provided by another pension fund which has taken the step of providing these services on a third party commercial basis. This trend has advanced in the Netherlands in particular, where a growing ...
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Features
Momentum for change gathers pace
The development of defined contribution (DC) pension plans in Ireland shows many similarities with the current situation in the UK, with companies switching from defined benefit (DB) to DC plans to remove pension fund risk from their balance sheets. Certainly the pressure on companies in Ireland to close off DB ...
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Features
Partnering with clients
The Army Emergency Relief and the Clara Abbot Foundation are two of the American endowments that recently have chosen Northern Trust to outsource their entire investment programme. The first body – committed to assist soldiers and their families to overcome financial emergencies – outsourced a $230m (E237m) portfolio; the second ...
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Features
Conducting a feasibility study
So, your organisation is interested in considering outsourcing some or all of your internal HR/pension functions. How do you proceed? A feasibility study is a good starting point: Business Case: Typically, a feasibility study will start with a business case for the decision to outsource. The business case will focus ...
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Features
Global control is gaining ground
Multinational companies are increasingly instituting centralised governance practices in their global pension management practices, as well as seeking to exert influence on the asset allocation decisions of their various pension funds world-wide, according to the findings of a new survey by consultant Watson Wyatt. The survey, which Watson claims to ...
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Features
Ring-fencing DB schemes
One open question in the Irish defined contribution (DC) market is the impact of the Personal Saving Retirement Account (PRSA). PRSA are a contract-based DC pension product. They bear a strong similarity to the UK’s stakeholder pension in that it is to extend pensions provision to people who, so far, ...
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Features
Japan embraces DC gratefully
Japan’s long-awaited defined contribution (DC) pension system has made steady progress this year, according to Yasuteru Aizawa, president of the International Pension & Economic Research Institute in Tokyo. More than 100 companies have moved to introduce DC pension schemes, 70 of them small companies. Aizawa hosted a recent conference attended ...
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Features
Rumour of death exaggerated
Last July the US stock funds suffered a $52.4bn withdrawal, the second biggest cash-out as a percentage of assets and the largest ever in dollar volume. A healthy portion of mutual fund assets comes from contributions to individual retirement schemes like 401(k) plans and IRAs (Individual retirement accounts). To many ...
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Features
Into a new era
The long-awaited Irish Pension Bill was passed in March, establishing a new legal framework that includes the creation of Personal Retirement Savings Accounts (PRSAs), amendments to the occupational system and the introduction of a pensions ombudsman with power to investigate any complaints against occupational plans. The PRSAs, similar to the ...
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Features
Europe next in line
The European human resources (HR) and finance community at medium and large corporations is going through a rapid transformation due to a phenomenon that the US, and to a lesser extent the UK, has been experiencing for the past 15 years – outsourcing. And, based on the experience of the ...
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Features
Part of funds' win-win strategies
Should pension scheme sponsors implement their pension promise through dedicated, internal ‘subsidiaries’? Or should they outsource the implementation function to external service providers? There is no simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer here. However, we can build a strategic framework to explore the pros and cons of outsourcing all or part ...
