All Features articles – Page 238
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Features
Tailoring messages to members
Like many aspects of modern life, pensions are becoming less standardised and more complex, with individuals facing more choice and demanding more information tailored to their needs. As pension funds try to meet the requirements of their members, communication is becoming an increasingly important part of the service they provide. ...
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Features
Moving into uncharted waters
As the yields on long-term lending shrink, it becomes harder for active managers to justify their fees managing these kinds of investments. Indeed, there is a case for saying that the credit markets in total are not attractive right now for institutions, with even BBB bonds offering just 50-70 basis ...
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Features
Ready for take off
Toine van der Stee, who took over as managing director of Blue Sky Group recently, is a relative new comer to the pension sector and appears very upbeat about current developments. “I always make a comparison between the pension sector and other financial sectors in the Netherlands,” he says “Some ...
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Features
Shallower returns
While the performance of funds of funds for August has been in keeping with the previous three months’ very positive and rising returns, the slope of the rise has taken a turn towards the shallow. The Eurekahedge Global Fund of Funds Index returned 0.8% in August (as compared with +1.6% ...
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Features
Starting a system from scratch
The office of Mikhel Oim, executive chairman of Hansa Fund Management, is in Tallinn’s burgeoning modern business sector, which spreads out below the picturesque old walled town. Its location mirrors the country’s pensions sector, which has seen new second and third pillar schemes grafted onto a crumbling Soviet-era PAYG first ...
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Features
Singapore searches for the 'X-factor'
When asked if Singapore had the “X-factor” of a top-class, world city, many of its urban planners, architects and developers said “no”. They believed that it was nothing more than a “wannabe” in global terms. Nevertheless, as southeast Asia’s most liquid real estate market and the current hub for the ...
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Features
All absolutes are not created equal
During recent years, particularly since 2000, there has been substantial and growing interest in absolute return investing. We believe there are two types of approach to absolute return investing and it is critical to understand the differences. One form is the hedge fund style – an approach that targets relatively ...
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Features
Risk sharing on agenda
Pension fund deficits and international accounting pressures are encouraging employers in some European countries to move from defined benefit (DB) pension plans to defined contribution (DC). The effect is to shift the financial risk of the pension from the employer to the individual employee. So can pensions be designed to ...
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Features
The alternative alternatives
Timber It has been much ignored by institutional investors, and yet timber has offered some of the strongest returns of the last decade. The asset class produced an annual compounded return of 12.44% in the period between 1989 and 2003, according to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries ...
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Features
Approach to IT still uneven
Performance and risk are growing concerns at Austrian pension funds and to better measure and manage these factors, the funds are implementing a range of third-party and in-house developed applications. Some funds are using spreadsheets or programming applications from scratch, while others are making use of the performance and risk ...
