All Features articles – Page 413
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Features
Worries about pension guarantees
Pension guarantees have been the hottest topic in the Danish pension debate in recent years. Another issue high on the agenda is the planned transition from book value to fair value in the accounts. The Danish pension system first pillar The ‘Folkepension’ is administered by the state and is ...
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Features
Getting to acceptable risk levels
A number of pension funds may well face a big test at their next actuarial valuation. With a combination of falling stock markets, low bond yields and increasing life expectancy pension fund solvency levels are coming under severe pressure. No wonder that in the UK the government has just announced ...
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Features
It's not all one-way traffic
Key to the issue of outsourcing is whether to manage assets in-house or to appoint a third party investment manager. According to George Urquhart of the WM Company, internal managers are finding themselves under pressure from tight human resource budgets while trustees and plan sponsors are under pressure from consultants ...
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Features
Top funds good all the time
The Danish Pension funds had a rather unusual year in 2000 where the factors determining performance differed significantly from the previous years. The steep falls on the international equity markets were countered by very healthy rises in the Danish equity market, which – measured by the Total index – rose ...
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Features
Proving cross-border alliances can work
While mergers and acquisitions have been two-a-penny within the custody sphere in recent years, partnerships between global custodians are a far rarer beast. Despite the very public scepticism of many of its fellow custodians, however, Mellon Trust has chosen to forge not one but three strategic alliances: its recent link-up ...
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Features
Island's simple and effective approach
Guernsey’s first pillar pensions system is simple but effective. The old age pension is payable from age 65 for men and women, at a uniform rate of £107.25 (e175) a week for a single person and £172.75 for a married couple. Benefits at the full rate are payable to all ...
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Features
Increasing role for funded approach
The expansion of private pension funds looks set to continue as reforms are implemented. Portugal’s pay-as-you-go system evolved in stages and a variety of limited regimes have been introduced since the beginning of the century. The social security system comprises two main regimes: the general system, covering private-sector workers, and ...
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Features
It's an open architecture world
The top domestic financial groups still control the investment fund market in Germany, with 90% of the assets and 80% of fund sales channelled through them. According to data from Lipper, the top 10 German fund managers increased their hold on the market during the second quarter of the year ...
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Features
Private equity awards
The £5bn (E8.1bn) Bradford-based West Yorkshire Pension Fund, the scheme for local government workers in the region, has appointed a raft of private equity managers as part of a move to increase venture assets to around four per cent of the fund’s portfolio in the next few years. The briefs, ...
