All Features articles – Page 388
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Features
Whether to take it or leave it
If the current low interest rate, low growth environment persists across Europe the question of annuities is likely become contentious. The value of annuities – which is linked to the performance of bonds – has fallen with interest rates. As defined contribution (DC) pension plans mature, people are discovering that ...
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Features
A life more rewarding
As defined contribution (DC) schemes become more popular with companies, it is increasingly important that they provide satisfactory investment and education programmes for their members to enable them to make suitable decisions about their long-term pension savings. An appropriate long-term strategy for a DC plan differs in many ways from ...
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Features
Merrill Lynch's shifting styles
Each month in IPE we analyse the portfolio style of a fund using the return-based portfolio analyser developed by London-based firm Style Research. This month we have chosen Merrill Lynch European Value A Fund, managed by Merrill Lynch Investment Managers. The graph shows the changes in style the fund experienced ...
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Features
The medium is the message
Investments are only as good as the information they are based on. In today’s world, there is no shortage of information and the problem has become more one of identifying the most relevant sources and integrating the information efficiently into the investment decision making process. New technology is making it ...
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Features
Rating moves into pensions
A decade ago, few participants in European capital markets would have recognised the term credit rating and fewer still within the pensions sector. Today, credit ratings are an increasingly recognised component of investors’ tool-box, but are only just beginning to emerge in a pensions context. Credit ratings are opinions from ...
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Features
Playing tag with US
Deep-seated domestic economic problems still dog the Japanese market, and strategists says these factors are not going to evaporate just yet. But corporate earnings are improving. In the absence of major developments on the home front, equity strategists say they expect to see Japanese share prices playing tag to the ...
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Features
Sitting on a $1trn time bomb
The US economy is sitting on a trillion-dollar time bomb, in the form of unrealistic pension return expectations. It affects defined benefit, defined contribution and cash balance plans alike. Is this an alarmist proposition? Alarming, yes. Alarmist, no. The average pension fund in the US is assuming a 9% return ...
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Features
PVF Achmea: the background
About 10 years ago PVF operated as a body to run pension schemes. Its services included advice to pension plan sponsors on policy matters, management of funds’ investments, pensions administration, collection of contributions and payment of benefits. It also looked after running early retirement and disability insurance cover. Today PVF ...
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Features
Grasping the retirement age nettle
Many companies and their employees have begun to realise over the last few years that pensions have become increasingly expensive to provide. The answer of most corporate employers has either been to increase contributions and/or to reduce benefits. But there is another solution which really requires action from governments and ...
