All Features articles – Page 322
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Features
Swift-footed giant takes the crown
The 2003 IPE Awards European Gold Winner for best European Pension Fund, ABP, is that rarest of beasts – a giant pension fund that is quick on its feet. As the judges for the IPE Awards commented: “Still and despite being the largest and opinion leading European/Dutch pension fund, it ...
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Features
Focusing on customer service
The pension fund of ABP, Europe’s largest retirement plan, needs little introduction. A self-administered public pension fund for employers and employees in the government, education and defence sector, at year-end 2002 its customer base consisted of approximately 1.1m active participants, 700,000 inactive participants and 700,000 pensioners. The insured are employed ...
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Features
Seeking out security for employees
A very new fund, the Vodafone Pension Trust is a CTA that was only established in March 2003, sponsored by Vodafone Deutschland. Open to all 10,000 participating employees in Germany, it offers a defined benefit (DB) scheme plus an employee-financed defined contribution (DC) scheme for 1,500 active members, 800 retired ...
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Features
The right numbers for telecoms employees
With the establishment 12 years ago of its own pension fund management company, Fonditel Pensiones EGFP (Fonditel), telecoms group Telefónica claims to be the pioneer model of the new second pillar pensions industry in Spain. Fonditel’s mandate was to implement its own autonomous investment policy with the objective of ensuring ...
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Features
Fund of funds gives focus to private equity investment
ATP Private Equity Partners was set up two and a half years ago to manage the global private equity investments on behalf of ATP and SP, the Danish supplementary pension arrangements. ATP Private Equity Partners combines the private equity incentive and co-investment model with the long-term capital source from an ...
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Features
Flexibility in matching pension liabilities
“Pension funds worldwide are in big trouble.” This bleak sentence starts a working paper on ‘How derivatives can help solve the pension fund crisis’, written by the Cass Business School1. Factors such as increasing life expectancy and changes in accounting rules have made it difficult for many pension fund managers ...
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Features
Harmonised schemes offer fresh opportunities
Flexibility and freedom of choice are the key words in the new pensions and benefits system of French oil and chemicals sector giant TotalfinaElf. Coinciding with the Loi Fabius on pensions and savings, the newly-merged group was quick to act in setting out its vision for new harmonised supplementary schemes ...
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Features
Policy ladder manages risks and helps funding
In July 2003, ABP introduced a new system of management of pension fund risk, the so-called ‘policy ladder’ (in Dutch ‘beleidsstaffel’). The initiation of the ladder led to two important adjustments in the pension plan: q The introduction of a set of explicit rules regarding the allocation of funding risks ...
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Features
Social partners take step into the future
Few European pension funds have made as much impact in a short space of time as MetallRente, the German industry-wide pension fund founded in 2001 by the labour union IG Metall and the employers’ association Gesamtmetall for employees of the metal and electrical industries. Such has been the success of ...
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Features
A way to smooth out future shock
The National Pensions Reserve Fund was set up two years ago, to meet some of Ireland’s future public pension liabilities. Pension costs – as elsewhere – are expected to rise significantly as the population ages, and assets of the fund will be drawn down by future ministers for finance starting ...
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Features
Setting a standard on governance
The BT Pension Scheme (BTPS), winner of this year’s IPE Silver Award for Corporate Pension Fund of the year, is the largest defined benefit (DB) company pension scheme in the UK. The fund has an impressive 365,811 members in total, comprising 91,692 contributing members, 95,829 deferred pensioners and 178,290 pensioners. ...
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Features
What happens when the money runs out?
This month’s Off the Record looks at the ticklish issue of solvency insurance for company pension plans in Europe – how to protect members of corporate pension plans when companies go bust. A number of European countries already operate solvency insurance schemes for corporate pensions. In Germany, and now in ...
