All Features articles – Page 184
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Features
Winds of change drive innovation
The last bear market, new accounting rules and demographics are causing major shifts in client behaviours, argues Amin Rajan in the first of three articles on a new study
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Features
Market-making activities solve problems of dominant size
As a fund that is negotiating the uncharted waters of a young pensions industry, the €656m AZ Obligatory Pension Fund of Croatia has won the Best Innovation Award for its bold move in becoming a market maker in government bonds.The Croatian pension system was reformed in 2002, the changes closely ...
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Features
Deficit addressed without sacrifice of DB principles
Pension fund deficits have led to increasing pressure for the funds themselves to switch from a defined benefit (DB) to a defined contribution (DC) basis - and this generally means reduced benefits for scheme members. Like many other British DB schemes, the BAE Systems Pension Scheme faced the challenge of ...
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Features
‘Smart’ diversification aids quest for stable high returns
Danish pension fund ATP has carried off the award for best liability-driven investment because of the innovative way it has transformed its business, creating a consistent framework not only for LDI, but also for investment-driven liabilities.The cornerstone of this approach is ATP’s belief that excellence in pension fund management requires ...
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Features
Neatly stacking your alpha
Separating investments into alpha and beta portfolios is only part of the story. Jason C Hsu explains the concept of alpha stacking
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Features
Tough time for alternatives
The opportunities in Spain have become more restrictive for hedge funds, Gail Moss finds
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Features
Proactive approach wins friends for default fund
With practically half a million members and pensioners in Sweden’s public sector, Kåpan Pensioner is a defined contribution scheme with a guaranteed rate of return and additional bonus. It is in competition with some of the major life insurance companies in Sweden, such as AMF and Skandia, as they can ...
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Features
Innovative approaches clinch joint awards
The Environment Agency is the leading public body for improving the environment in England and Wales, and its pension fund strongly believes that this corporate mission should also permeate its own investment strategy. The scheme’s aim is to obtain optimum risk-adjusted returns, and it believes that sustainable environmentally responsible investment ...
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Features
The FII approval process
Vikrant Gugnani, CEO of Reliance Mutual Fund in Mumbai explains the background to the foreign investment rules: “FIIs were first allowed to invest in India in 1992. Initially the FII holdings in any company were subject to various investment limits. Also funds invested by FIIs had to have at least ...
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Features
Fine art of asset management
In the iconography of European asset management, Dexia Asset Management could be cast as the hero from zero. In the 1990s it was merely a gleam in the eye of the Franco-Belgian Dexia banking group. Today it is one of Europe’s leading asset managers, with over €100bn assets under management. ...
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Features
Right asset mix ensures continued outperformance
Gildi, Iceland’s third biggest pension fund with €2.8bn under management entered the IPE Awards because it believes its portfolio management and excellent performance make it the small nation’s best pension fund. The judges agreed. “At 23%, our annual performance was the best for 2005 among pension funds in Iceland and ...
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Features
New diversity in assets brings high returns
Over the past five years, the State Pension Fund of Finland (VER) has consistently developed its portfolio allocation and its asset management, bringing them up to international standards.Under this policy, a new neutral allocation and an alternative investments segment has been introduced to the portfolio. Other innovations include a new ...
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Features
Attention turns to low returns
Kazakhstan was the first country of the former USSR to implement a pension reform. A funded pension pillar has been working there since 1998. It operates in parallel with the pay-as-you-go system inherited from Soviet times. Along with mandatory pension contributions there are also voluntary and voluntary/occupational contributions. Kazakhstan’s population ...
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Features
Strength in depth proves key to top award
To win an award of such high standing as the IPE Gold Award for Best European Pension Fund requires excellence across the board, not just in one particular aspect of a scheme’s set-up. For the award acknowledges not just past and present performance but the way the scheme view its ...
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Features
Members back cash pay-outs
Despite the fear of governments, pension plan members prefer cash withdrawals, as David White report
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Features
Back to basics
Pension funds are recognising that getting asset allocation right is an essential first principle. Rachel Fixsen reports
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Features
Backdrop to the Pacific century
Richard Newell looks at some of the key dynamics at play in the Asian region
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Features
DC risks are ‘better understood’
The challenges and problems of defined contribution (DC) schemes were among the points discussed at the Global Forum on Private Pensions organised by the OECD in conjunction with the International Organisation of Pension Supervisors (IOPS) at a conference in Istanbul. “The herd trend from traditional defined benefit (DB) to pure ...
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Features
Beware ridiculous investment cases
Although commodity markets have been around for centuries, investors’ interest in them has always been quite limited. Over the last few years, however, this has changed completely. Commodities have very quickly become very popular and investment in commodities is growing at an unprecedented rate. It is estimated that over the ...
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Features
Small scheme that thinks big
Don’t be fooled by size. Small can be beautiful. The Robert Bosch scheme is small but it has a big heart and even bigger ambition. It has already notched up a series of firsts: first Pensionsfonds-type scheme to be offered by an industrial group in Germany; the first to receive ...
