All Features articles – Page 382
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Features
What's value added any more?
‘Value added’ has become a catchphrase in the global custody vocabulary. An all-embracing concept, it has been habitually applied to any service offered beyond the traditional core custody offerings of safekeeping and settlement. However, the concept of what adds value is coming under the microscope as pension funds and fund ...
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Features
One man one vote, but winner takes all
A number of currency managers use a variety of fundamental and technical inputs into their decisions on when to hedge currency risk. But, how can these sources of insight best be combined? Each factor could be given an equal share in determining the hedge ratio – one man, one vote ...
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Features
Always looking for more
Custody today is a commodity – or so the line goes. And with the number of providers in the market steadily diminishing and technology levelling the playing field, who’s going to argue? Talk to Europe’s pension funds, however, and the debate on the role of custodians becomes less clear-cut. How ...
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Features
'The role of annuity markets in financing retirement'
This is a welcome new study, which will appeal both to the general reader and to those seeking to understand the structure and valuation of annuities. Although based on US material and experience, it comes at a time when there is much debate in the UK and elsewhere about whether ...
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Features
Upsetting the apple cart
Defined contribution (DC) is poised to make a clean sweep of collectively agreed nationwide pension schemes in Sweden. One after the other, these schemes have become contribution-based. In 1996 the plan for blue collar workers in the private sector was changed from a defined benefit (DB) to DC scheme, known ...
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Features
New index gives better picture of market
The Italian equity market is awaiting the arrival of a new index. The Italian stock exchange, Borsa Italiana, and global equity index provider Standard & Poor’s have established a partnership to launch a new index intended to become the benchmark for the Italian equity market. The new index, to be ...
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Features
Putting new building blocks in place
The pension scheme for construction industry workers in Ireland is very different to other Irish plans. Not only is it an industry-wide scheme, it is also a statutory scheme. “Apart from the national social welfare system, ours is the only statutory scheme in Ireland,” says Pat Ferguson, administrator of the ...
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Features
Fitting neatly into bond portfolios
Pfandbriefe are essentially a form of asset-backed security that is primarily issued by the German mortgage banks to refinance their loan portfolios. Making up some 20% of the total lending business in Germany, the mortgage banks have been restricted by the German Mortgage Bank Act to lending on residential and ...
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Features
Steel schemes break mould
When the employers and the trade unions in the Belgian metal industry came together in 1999 to discuss the formation of what was to become Le Fonds de Pension Metal, they were conscious they were breaking the mould. It was the first time that a sector-wide plan had been contemplated ...
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Features
Spending the risk budget
Risk budgeting is a multi-faceted problem, and there are many kinds of interpretations. These arise from the different ways we can define risk and the ‘budget’. When we are analysing the risks within a pension fund, it is best to view the pension fund as a part of the sponsor’s ...
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Features
Capture 'pooling' savings with captives
With an increased focus from both human resources and finance on cost-effective employee benefit programmes, we continue to seek ways to contain cost while maximising benefit attractiveness. Increasingly, companies are resorting to the next level of creativity in order to squeeze the bottom line costs, without neces-sarily taking away from ...
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Features
Risk clouds equities
Asset allocation is often emphasised as the most important single decision in the investment process leading to a good result. For portfolio managers a good result, of course, is outperforming a benchmark. As soon as the macroeconomic scenario is established, factors such as expected return on the different asset classes, ...
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Features
The shape of things to come
The new shape of the Belgian pension fund industry is preoccupying Karel Stroobants, the former general manager of the VKG/CPM pension fund and just re-elected as president of the Belgian Pension Funds Association. “I want to do everything possible to put the new Belgian pensions law into place, once it ...
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Features
Reacting to local conditions
The Northern Ireland (NI) economy is made up of small businesses – the figures from the Equality Commission that monitors employment patterns in the province for businesses over 11 employees, show that of the 3,800 businesses in the private sector, over 2,700 had less than 50 employees in 2000, and ...
