All Features articles – Page 230
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Features
Comfort from derivatives
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland – the same question: ‘Do derivatives perform a useful function in pension fund portfolios or are too costly, complicated and risky?’ Here are their answers: Hasser Jørgensen, chief investment officer at Denmark’s PFA Pension which ...
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Features
Coming to terms with derivatives
Remember 1995? Only 10 years ago or so, most investment managers still felt pretty uncomfortable with derivatives. Derivative traders were an exotic species using Greek symbols and a jargon nobody could understand. No surprise, pension funds hardly used these instruments, or even avoided them in principle. What is a derivative? ...
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Features
Long life complications
The cost of any promise to provide someone with an annual pension for life depends on how long that person lives. Improvements in mortality have meant that people are living far longer than was anticipated. In the past 40 years, life expectancy at age 65 has increased on average by ...
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Features
Pension fund contagion fears
European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet has warned that pension funds and insurers could be sources of vulnerabilities that could spread “contagion” in the wider financial system. Trichet, speaking in Frankfurt, pointed out that pension funds and insurers might be “sources of vulnerabilities through their increased interdependences and linkages with ...
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Features
Continuing reform focuses on governance and inclusion
The UK pensions industry needs Barclays. It is a market that is full of doom and gloom. It is only fitting then that Barclays should win the IPE European Country Silver Award 2005. For this is a sterling example of how to move forward. The dynamism, enthusiasm and sheer determination ...
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Features
Hidden costs of trading revealed
Most trustees have no problem in seeing why investment performance must be monitored. The success or failure of the entire fund is at stake. But when it comes to putting transaction costs under the microscope, the exercise can sometimes seem too arcane to bother with. Still, many pension funds are ...
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Features
The man with star credentials
The phenomenon of US movie stars crossing the Atlantic to tread the boards on the London stage is now well established – and it looks like the same thing is now happening in the pensions and asset management field. The latest high profile transatlantic transplant is Mark Anson of CalPERS, ...
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Features
Pricing in credit risks
As Bund yields touch down to another all-time low, do investment grade credit spreads also have further to shrink? “We are not back at the (credit spread) lows we reached back at the end of February/early March this year,” says Klaas Smits of Robeco Asset Management. “And we are not ...
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Features
Crisis! What crisis?
The current debate about pensions and about how society can best adapt to an ageing population is distorted by the belief that ageing is a huge economic and social problem, leading to a sense of crisis. Yet the population will not age overnight and we have some 20 years to ...
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Features
Web-based data service gives members the full picture
In 2004 and 2005, PKA members’ services were developed further by the introduction of a number of extra facilities on the website. The strategy for this development has been based on providing the right information at the relevant times, through the channel preferred by the individual member. Almost 20,000 members ...
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Features
Date with destiny
It’s the time of reckoning once again for the pensions community as the IPE European Pensions Awards winners are announced. And as we always make a point of noting, it is also a time to celebrate the achievements not just of our winners, but of those involved in pensions the ...
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Features
Quantitative route to effective decision-making
The BPI Valorizacão Pension Fund’s investment strategy has been heavily influenced by the new company chief investment officer’s hedge fund background. He wanted to implement a model that would allow the pension scheme to have more consistent numbers and minimise negative performance periods. He concluded that traditional emotion-driven quantitative decisions ...
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Features
Digging deeper in the members' interests
The key to Denmark’s €41.3bn pension fund winning IPE’s Silver Award for Best European Public Pension Fund in 2005 is undoubtedly its ability to dig deeper to achieve the best possible solutions for its members. This is evident in its four-pronged approach to mastering pension fund management. Firstly, it considers ...
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Features
A developing relationship
The degree of success of investment banks in the worlds of pension funds and insurance companies is difficult to ascertain. In part this is because investment bankers are happy to use the kind of spin that would make a politician blush. In part it is because trading is so sensitive ...
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Features
A minefield of diplomacy
Most industries are based upon relationships and the investment industry is no exception. But, unlike other industries, the investment community comes under close regulatory and media scrutiny for what are perceived as the inevitable conflicts of interest associated with a handful of investment banks dominating the industry. A number of ...
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Features
Dynamic strategy seeks out the risks that are worth it
Dutch pension fund PGGM has won the best industry-wide pension fund award for its creation of an innovative portfolio of strategies used in absolute return investing. Over the years, PGGM’s own asset- liability modelling (ALM) studies have led the fund to allocate its assets increasingly to alternative investments. However, during ...
