Asset Allocation – Page 254
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Features
A life more rewarding
As defined contribution (DC) schemes become more popular with companies, it is increasingly important that they provide satisfactory investment and education programmes for their members to enable them to make suitable decisions about their long-term pension savings. An appropriate long-term strategy for a DC plan differs in many ways from ...
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Merrill Lynch's shifting styles
Each month in IPE we analyse the portfolio style of a fund using the return-based portfolio analyser developed by London-based firm Style Research. This month we have chosen Merrill Lynch European Value A Fund, managed by Merrill Lynch Investment Managers. The graph shows the changes in style the fund experienced ...
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Playing tag with US
Deep-seated domestic economic problems still dog the Japanese market, and strategists says these factors are not going to evaporate just yet. But corporate earnings are improving. In the absence of major developments on the home front, equity strategists say they expect to see Japanese share prices playing tag to the ...
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PVF Achmea: the background
About 10 years ago PVF operated as a body to run pension schemes. Its services included advice to pension plan sponsors on policy matters, management of funds’ investments, pensions administration, collection of contributions and payment of benefits. It also looked after running early retirement and disability insurance cover. Today PVF ...
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Grasping the retirement age nettle
Many companies and their employees have begun to realise over the last few years that pensions have become increasingly expensive to provide. The answer of most corporate employers has either been to increase contributions and/or to reduce benefits. But there is another solution which really requires action from governments and ...
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Change is in the air
Employee benefits are among the most significant costs to an organisation after salaries. They are also probably the element of the reward programme that differs the most across Europe as differences in legislation, tax, social security and culture have given rise to vastly different benefit environments. However, these diverse environments ...
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Individual investment choice under discussion
Employees of Austrian companies have two routes into defined contribution (DC) schemes: through an insurance contract or through a pensions fund contract. Before the introduction of the Pensionskassen system in 1990, the insurance route was the only one open to an employee. The employer takes out what is effectively a ...
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Employers lead the flight to defined contribution
The move into defined contribution schemes in Austria had been driven almost entirely by the desire of businesses to remove their pension fund liabilities from their balance sheets. Until 1990 all occupational pension schemes in Austria were book reserve schemes. During the 1970s this created the problem of hidden liabilities ...
