Asset Allocation – Page 245
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 ...
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Why home teams are winners
As the trend towards outsourcing continues to gather pace, and both external managers and investment consultants intensify their marketing efforts, internal managers must be feeling a little beleaguered. But they are sure to find some reassurance in the WM Company’s latest analysis of internal investment management in the UK pensions ...
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Power of Master KAGs
If there is a development in the German market that could change the structure of the asset management industry as a whole, is the development of the ‘master KAGs’, a new multi-manager structure that has hit the headlines of the German financial press during the last few months. The development ...
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Living in tougher times
Too high expectations regarding the development of the pension industry in Germany during this year have resulted in disappointment among the asset management community. The forecast growth in assets that the pension reform was supposed to bring into the institutional arena has not materialised, partly due to market conditions but ...
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New product shakes up market
In June the Austrian parliament finally adopted the government bill reforming the country’s severance pay system that will definitely have an important impact on the development of occupational pensions. The discussions regarding the reform of the statutory severance pay, the Abertigung, started in the late 1990s when the Austrian Trade ...
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Time for new products
It is obvious by now that drastic measures are required to handle the looming pension crisis in Europe as – because of demographic developments – a smaller number of salary earners will need to pay for the state pension income of an increasing amount of pensioners. European governments and professional ...
