All Features articles – Page 368
-
Features
DC benefits both sides
Banks and financial institutions have been in the vanguard of the move to DC pension plans in Ireland. AIB Group closed its DB scheme to new entrants at the end of 1997 and launched a DC scheme in 1998. The DC scheme now has almost 5,000 active members in Ireland ...
-
Features
Conservatism shows in bond focus
Pension fund investors in Italy remain conservative, with only around 20% of total assets invested in equities. Focusing on the new closed-end pension funds, according to data from Covip, the industry’s supervisory board, at the end of 2001 75% of total assets were invested in fixed income vehicles. Italian bonds ...
-
Features
Bonds still predominate
According to data from Bad Homburg-based Feri Institutional Management, the way German pension funds invested at the end of last year didn’t differ too much from a year early. At the end of 2001 pension assets invested in equities represented 26% of the total, mainly allocated to investments in the ...
-
Features
Looking for some breathing space
Pension funds are quite different from other institutional investors because of their long term liabilities. This was the robust and unequivocal response from readers to this months survey. This may seem a statement of the obvious, but increasingly, regulator and accounting bodies appear to want to squeeze pension funds into ...
-
Features
Doing business with the family
When looking to outsource, pension funds are increasingly being given a new opportunity to have their asset management provided by another pension fund which has taken the step of providing these services on a third party commercial basis. This trend has advanced in the Netherlands in particular, where a growing ...
-
Features
Momentum for change gathers pace
The development of defined contribution (DC) pension plans in Ireland shows many similarities with the current situation in the UK, with companies switching from defined benefit (DB) to DC plans to remove pension fund risk from their balance sheets. Certainly the pressure on companies in Ireland to close off DB ...
-
Features
Partnering with clients
The Army Emergency Relief and the Clara Abbot Foundation are two of the American endowments that recently have chosen Northern Trust to outsource their entire investment programme. The first body – committed to assist soldiers and their families to overcome financial emergencies – outsourced a $230m (E237m) portfolio; the second ...
-
Features
Conducting a feasibility study
So, your organisation is interested in considering outsourcing some or all of your internal HR/pension functions. How do you proceed? A feasibility study is a good starting point: Business Case: Typically, a feasibility study will start with a business case for the decision to outsource. The business case will focus ...
-
Features
Global control is gaining ground
Multinational companies are increasingly instituting centralised governance practices in their global pension management practices, as well as seeking to exert influence on the asset allocation decisions of their various pension funds world-wide, according to the findings of a new survey by consultant Watson Wyatt. The survey, which Watson claims to ...
