All Features articles – Page 323
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Features
Specialised IT helps meet needs of medical sector
The VKG pension fund in Belgium, established more than three decades ago, aims to create decent pensions for the country’s doctors, dentists and pharmacists. The fund is geared mainly towards independent professionals, because, it says, their first pillar state pension provision is very weak. VKG offers a service to its ...
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Features
High-quality service and investment performance
This fund is a Polish mandatory, defined contribution, open pension fund. The state-owned Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) collects and allocates pension contributions to open pension funds, with each individual member contributing 7.3% of their gross salary on a monthly basis. The main aims of the fund, which was established in ...
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Features
Solid investment for self-employed professionals
The national pensions and benefit fund for Italy’s self-employed architects and engineers, Inarcassa, has e2.3 billion under management. Since privatisation in 1995, it has been upgrading its systems and financial management to compete independently, without state support. Investment strategy is determined by a national delegates’ committee, consisting of some 200 ...
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Features
Time to latch on to tri-party report
A repo is an agreement between a buyer and seller of securities, whereby the seller agrees to repurchase them at an agreed price and, usually, at a pre-agreed future date. They are widely used as a money market investment vehicle and as an instrument of central bank monetary policy. Repo ...
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Features
Lifting the lid on the trade-offs
They say all roads lead to Rome. Well, they did recently for some key players in the European community’s pension arena, attendees to a forum on the pan-European pension funds directive organised by Mefop, the Italian foundation for the development of the Italian pensions market. Among the speakers in the ...
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Features
Making the most of risk
Strategic asset allocation is the key decision for pension funds. How much to allocate to equities and to bonds is and always has been the most important driver of returns for funds. The long term nature of pension investing has dictated that funds typically review their strategic allocation every three ...
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Features
Value-added with minimum risk
Relatively low global short-term interest rates continue to challenge investors. Rates declined precipitously in the US and throughout Europe and the UK in response to geo-political fears, tepid economic growth and concerns regarding the deteriorating credit market over the last 19 to 24 months. While rates have rebounded somewhat this ...
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Features
Keeping abreast of events
Few pension schemes can have their location in as historic a setting as An Post in Dublin. It is based at the General Post Office building in O’Connell St, where the 1916 Rising started with the reading of the proclamation founding a separate Irish Republic. The building is still the ...
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Features
Norway's small adjustments mean big changes
On December 8, 2000 the Kvidal task force was appointed by royal decree. The mandate was to report on gender neutrality in retirement schemes for the private sector. The task force was also asked to give an opinion on denying the insurance companies and pension funds the ability to use ...
