All IPE articles in December 2003 (Magazine) – Page 4
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Features
Flexibility in matching pension liabilities
“Pension funds worldwide are in big trouble.” This bleak sentence starts a working paper on ‘How derivatives can help solve the pension fund crisis’, written by the Cass Business School1. Factors such as increasing life expectancy and changes in accounting rules have made it difficult for many pension fund managers ...
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Features
Harmonised schemes offer fresh opportunities
Flexibility and freedom of choice are the key words in the new pensions and benefits system of French oil and chemicals sector giant TotalfinaElf. Coinciding with the Loi Fabius on pensions and savings, the newly-merged group was quick to act in setting out its vision for new harmonised supplementary schemes ...
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Features
Policy ladder manages risks and helps funding
In July 2003, ABP introduced a new system of management of pension fund risk, the so-called ‘policy ladder’ (in Dutch ‘beleidsstaffel’). The initiation of the ladder led to two important adjustments in the pension plan: q The introduction of a set of explicit rules regarding the allocation of funding risks ...
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Special Report
The future for responsible investment
It has been a fascinating autumn for those that believe in responsible investment. There have been so many developments, there has hardly been time to catch your breath. Granada, and BSkyB are just two examples of UK companies whose governance has been heavily questioned and indeed influenced. In the Netherlands ...
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Features
Social partners take step into the future
Few European pension funds have made as much impact in a short space of time as MetallRente, the German industry-wide pension fund founded in 2001 by the labour union IG Metall and the employers’ association Gesamtmetall for employees of the metal and electrical industries. Such has been the success of ...
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Features
A way to smooth out future shock
The National Pensions Reserve Fund was set up two years ago, to meet some of Ireland’s future public pension liabilities. Pension costs – as elsewhere – are expected to rise significantly as the population ages, and assets of the fund will be drawn down by future ministers for finance starting ...
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Features
Setting a standard on governance
The BT Pension Scheme (BTPS), winner of this year’s IPE Silver Award for Corporate Pension Fund of the year, is the largest defined benefit (DB) company pension scheme in the UK. The fund has an impressive 365,811 members in total, comprising 91,692 contributing members, 95,829 deferred pensioners and 178,290 pensioners. ...
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Features
What happens when the money runs out?
This month’s Off the Record looks at the ticklish issue of solvency insurance for company pension plans in Europe – how to protect members of corporate pension plans when companies go bust. A number of European countries already operate solvency insurance schemes for corporate pensions. In Germany, and now in ...
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Features
Specialised IT helps meet needs of medical sector
The VKG pension fund in Belgium, established more than three decades ago, aims to create decent pensions for the country’s doctors, dentists and pharmacists. The fund is geared mainly towards independent professionals, because, it says, their first pillar state pension provision is very weak. VKG offers a service to its ...
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Features
High-quality service and investment performance
This fund is a Polish mandatory, defined contribution, open pension fund. The state-owned Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) collects and allocates pension contributions to open pension funds, with each individual member contributing 7.3% of their gross salary on a monthly basis. The main aims of the fund, which was established in ...
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Features
Solid investment for self-employed professionals
The national pensions and benefit fund for Italy’s self-employed architects and engineers, Inarcassa, has e2.3 billion under management. Since privatisation in 1995, it has been upgrading its systems and financial management to compete independently, without state support. Investment strategy is determined by a national delegates’ committee, consisting of some 200 ...
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Features
Time to latch on to tri-party report
A repo is an agreement between a buyer and seller of securities, whereby the seller agrees to repurchase them at an agreed price and, usually, at a pre-agreed future date. They are widely used as a money market investment vehicle and as an instrument of central bank monetary policy. Repo ...
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Features
Lifting the lid on the trade-offs
They say all roads lead to Rome. Well, they did recently for some key players in the European community’s pension arena, attendees to a forum on the pan-European pension funds directive organised by Mefop, the Italian foundation for the development of the Italian pensions market. Among the speakers in the ...
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Special Report
From periphery to mainstream
Dutch superfund ABP has been actively involved in both socially responsible investment (SRI) and corporate governance since the mid-1990s. Since then, ABP has undertaken a whole array of national and international activities to include SRI and corporate governance in its mainstream investment processes. ABP is one of the leaders in ...
