All Features articles – Page 110
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Features
Going global for inflation
In Europe, it seems pricey to buy inflation, whether for liability-hedging or simple wealth preservation. Brendan Maton looks further afield
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Features
Volatility – friend or foe?
Amin Rajan asks what if we are in a prolonged era of fatter tails and frequent bubbles?
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Features
Find the right provider
Gail Moss outlines how pension funds should manage the tender process to ensure they appoint the right providers
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Features
Where East meets West
The Iron Curtain came down more than two decades ago. With the eastern expansion of the European Union that followed, especially in this time of rapid globalisation, one might have thought that all things would be equal by now. But they are far from it.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Sinterklaas
Before Christmas, we at Wasserdicht Pension Funds took a call from a research company. They were visiting Dutch pension funds, they said, to carry out a study of attitudes among institutional investors.
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Features
‘Democracy will be threatened if you lose grip on public finances’
Former Swedish prime minister Göran Persson recalled the night in 1997 when the EU’s Stability and Growth pact was negotiated. His cabinet had already made the decision that Sweden would not join. “We had decided we were not mature enough to join this club, so we would wait. But even then, we were in much better shape than many of those who took it as a given that they should join the euro-zone.”
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Features
Fear of euro-zone break-up takes hold
Almost half of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey felt that the biggest credible threat to the global economy or financial markets in 2012 was the euro-zone break-up beginning to look inevitable. “The risk of a break-up has consequences impossible to oversee and hedge. It is not unlikely anymore,” said a Dutch fund.
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Features
Funds must apply holistic approach to equity risk
Pension funds assessing their ability to take on equity risk would do well to adopt a “holistic” approach that considers not only the more “technical” aspects of risk associated with financial products, but also the ability of schemes’ sponsors to cover that risk.
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Features
Another fine mess
Ollie: “Buying that bridge was no mistake. That’s going to be worth a lot of money to us someday.” – Way Out West (1937).
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Features
Alternative to euro-zone survival far worse
The euro-zone will survive, if only because the alternative to the current market turbulence would be worse, said former Swedish prime minister Göran Persson.
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Features
Infrastructure for all – but not with state aid
The UK chancellor, George Osborne, last year announced plans to attract £20bn (€23bn) of pension fund assets into infrastructure projects, backed by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) and the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).
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Features
Solvency II again raises hackles in Frankfurt
The sixth European Federation for Retirement Provision (EFRP) conference as well as the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) conference were held in Frankfurt at the end of November and were a one-off for at least two reasons.
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Features
Fears about Solvency II
Pension funds are broadly against Solvency II. Yet the EC is still assessing whether parts of it might apply to pension funds through a new IORP Directive, writes Nina Röhrbein
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Features
Ireland returns to the funding standard
With the imminent reintroduction of the funding standard in Ireland, as well as new guidelines on sovereign annuities, the pension industry is to witness some significant changes.
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Features
Dutch fiduciaries maintain their guard
Fiduciary managers foresee greater demand for inflation-linked strategies and give a cautious welcome to some aspects of a still vague pension deal, writes Mariska van der Westen
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Features
Swiss challenge
Global custodians are finding Swiss accounting regulations a barrier to its custody and servicing market, writes Iain Morse
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Features
Hedging your bets
Just over 70% of respondents to this month’s Off The Record quick poll stated that their pension fund invested in hedge funds.
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Features
I polder, you polder
In October, the Dutch pension system was named the best in the world for the third year running by the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension index. But despite its top ranking, the Dutch system scored less on adequacy and sustainability than the previous year and its overall index value slipped from 78.3 to 77.9. In the Netherlands, as elsewhere, pension provision is under threat from a rising tide of troubles, including an ageing (and long-lived) population, low interest rates and fretful financial markets.
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Features
Leave it to technocrats?
Those who believe that governance by technocrat will solve Italy’s ills should think again. The IASB is currently working on a three-bucket approach for financial asset impairment. The idea is that newly originated or purchased loans – the model must work for both – are allocated by an entity to one of three buckets. And in very general terms, assets will move from one bucket to another in order to reflect deteriorating credit quality and credit losses. This is the board’s third stab at developing an impairment model since 2009.
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Features
Too much of a good thing?
A well structured fund can enjoy a return premium of up to 1%. What governance structures should smaller pension funds aspire to? Gail Moss reports
