All Features articles – Page 213
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Features
Consultants refocus agenda
The law on occupational pensions in Belgium and the European pension fund directive both have a major impact on the management of occupational pensions, says Jos Verlinden of M&P Consult. “Although the directive in itself does not bring a revolution to pension funds in Belgium, the supervisory authority has drafted ...
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Features
The challenges lying ahead
Hugo Clemeur of the Association of Belgian Pension Funds, Brussels Apart from the preoccupations caused generally by the demographic evolution compounded with slow economic growth, the second pillar pensions sector in Belgium faces a number of challenges of which I would mention only three, although many more could be mentioned ...
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Features
Alchemy to the rescue?
Portable alpha offers pension funds the investment equivalent of alchemy – transmuting non-performing into performing assets. Using swaps or futures contracts - a process known as equitisation - funds can transfer or ‘port’ the alpha generated by one asset class to other asset classes in their portfolio. In this way, ...
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Features
Allocation helps double returns
The median Belgian pension fund posted a return of +16.9% over the year 2005, according to Mercer’s Pension Investment Performance Service (PIPS) survey. This figure exceeds the averasge return posted by Belgian Association of Pension Funds of 15.1%. This excellent result is attributable to the strong performance of equity markets. ...
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Features
Among the EU's 'bad' citizens
The IORP directive, while calling for more transparency in pension matters, could hardly be regarded as an example of transparency itself. Clarity and transparency are indeed probably the most missed items in the directive. Therefore, the correct transposition into national laws is not always a foregone conclusions. The directive should ...
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Features
Applying an objective view
One of the reasons that portable alpha has yet to be adopted by pension funds may be that it does not appear to meet their needs. Although it is conceptually attractive, its seems to have no practical application. Ronald Ryan, founder and CEO of US-based Ryan Asset Liability Management believes ...
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Features
The next big thing?
They could be the ‘new big thing’ in the US savings industry. And like the individual retirement accounts, the new Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) imply putting aside tax free money and investing it in stocks and bonds. Although the sums are smaller, the potential is not: there could be $75bn ...
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Features
Bond managers: can they predict?
Although we have seen quite a bit of research on the usefulness of equity analyst’s buy and sell recommendations for individual shares, far less research has been done that addresses the overall asset class visions of analysts and strategists. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that data providers ...
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Features
UK bonds meet robust demand
The Debt Management Office in the UK says its auction of long-dated government bonds has met a “robust result”. A DMO spokesman declined to speculate on the buyers. But he said: “It’s a fair bet they’ll find their way to the people you’d expect to be buying.” He cited statistics ...
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Features
The bottom line of catastrophe
Politicians will tell you that everything changed on 11 September 2001. But then again, so will insurance companies. For the first time, hedging a bet against a major catastrophe, in the form of a terrorist attack, does not seem like a good idea. Unsurprisingly, insurance companies are still reluctant to ...
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Features
Pensions promises - made to be broken?
Faced with demographic and accounting pressures, many European companies that sponsor defined benefit (DB) pension plans are seeking to change the terms of this promise by moving the pension fund risk they bear from themselves to their employees. The simplest way for them to do this is to close the ...
