All Features articles – Page 111
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Features
Persistency via operational excellence
In the final article in the current series, Jervis Smith and Amin Rajan highlight the role of third-party administrators as innovation partners
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Investment detour
This autumn, we at Wasserdicht Pension Funds in the Netherlands are touring some of our factories around the country to talk to members and pensioners about the pension fund.
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Features
Focus on DC
It is difficult to retain sight of the founding principles of the EU’s Pensions Directive (IORP) when confronted with the 500-page response of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) to the EC’s call for advice last April on its review of the legislation.
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Features
Scepticism over cross-border schemes
The desire to implement defined contribution (DC) pension plans is growing among companies around the world, while the necessity, one day, of a pan-European DC scheme is at the front of industry minds. But even though some pension providers have already paved the way, the journey is a long one.
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Features
Heightened scrutiny on derivatives collateral
The use of credit support annexe (CSA) agreements, defining the collateral that can be posted in bilateral over-the-counter derivative (OTC) trades, has increased significantly over recent years as pension funds have made increasing use of derivatives.
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Features
A precarious balance
We have heard much in recent years about institutions that were, or are, ‘too big to fail’, particularly in 2008 when Bear Stearns collapsed, followed later that year by the entry of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into government conservatorship, the bailout of AIG and the collapse without rescue of Lehman Brothers.
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Features
The good, the bad and the average
New analysis from Merrill Lynch indicates that hedge funds have never been so closely correlated with equities as they have in the past three years. It initiated another of those periodic waves of comment that pension funds are wasting their time and money going to hedge funds for “uncorrelated returns”.
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Features
NAPF: Preparing for auto-enrolment
The EU and DC were two of the most hotly debated topics at October’s National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) conference in Manchester.
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Features
Cash in the attic
Squeezing a return out of cash can expose funds to unexpected risk. But Charlotte Moore suggests that using it for strategic optionality removes the need to take risk in the search for yield
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Features
Alight for full funding
Markus Hübscher, CEO of the Swiss Federal Railways pension fund, told Nina Röhrbein about his fund’s restructuring and new internal governance structure
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Features
New chairman rings in the changes at AbA
Attendees of this year’s autumn conference of the German pension fund association Arbeitsgemeinschaft betriebliche Altersversorgung (AbA) in Cologne found an organisation preparing for a new pension era in Germany and across Europe.
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Features
Pension anger
Even if they can’t easily articulate what single thing could be done to make them go home, the Wall Street protestors and their European counterparts have more than a little in common with the Dutch youth political activists who last month joined forces in a ‘pensions rebellion’ against the Netherlands’ ...
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Features
The long-termists
As those who watched the 2006 film ‘300’ will remember, ‘the 300’ refers to the band of Spartans who heroically fought against the Persians at the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC. A modern re-incarnation – The 300 Club – has been brought to life by Saker Nusseibeh, CIO of Hermes ...
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Features
Smart Finnish moves
Brendan Maton spoke with Staffan Sevón, chief investment officer at Veritas, about his fund’s hands-on approach to investing
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Features
The ethical oligarchs
Kicking off the National Ethical Investment Week in London, pollster YouGov published the results of a survey measuring the British public’s interest in green and ethical financial products.
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Features
UK pension funds judge buyouts as too costly
This summer’s market turbulence took many UK pension funds by surprise, pushing them to look even more closely at their de-risking strategy. But while pension buyout deal prices have remained fairly stable, the cost of such deals has increased significantly due to falls in bond yields.
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Features
Currency affairs
Three-quarters of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey used currency management, 91.5% of these doing so for currency exposure hedging and 8.5% for returns.
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Features
(Really) high yields
Dramatic repricing has opened up opportunities in high-yield, finds Lynn Strongin Dodds
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Features
French regulator urges investment in SMEs
The French government’s initiative to set up a private equity fund with institutional investor capital to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) secure investments comes as a surprise, considering the bad press accorded to private equity in France since 2008.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Plain talking
This week I read about a new initiative calling itself the 300 Club.
