All Features articles – Page 92
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Features
State of flux continues for Dutch
With the recent announcement of proposals for a “middle way”, Jetta Klijnsma, state secretary at the Ministry of Social Affairs, seemed to have turned the corner in the ongoing debate over the revised financial assessment framework (FTK). The pensions sector has now shown a broad consensus about the new direction.
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Communications go digital
The pensions industry is one of the worst at understanding its customers, which is one reason why two providers have developed innovative online tools, writes Nina Röhrbein
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Features
Commanding heights
Jean-Pierre Couture makes the case for top-down investing in an era of ‘de-globalisation’
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Features
A new chapter
Martin Steward speaks to Cecila Thomasson Blomquist at PP Pension, whose DB business relies on dynamic asset allocation around a solid real estate core, and whose DC business is undergoing major changes
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Features
Bring on the lawyers
A recent legal opinion on behalf of UK local authority pension funds has ignited controversy, according to Stephen Bouvier
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The correlation breakdown is secure
You may have heard option traders talk about the ‘volatility smile’. Recent events might add a new term to the traders’ lexicon: the ‘risk-free yield curve smile’.
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Features
Too big to fall short?
A new government has broadened the mandate of the Norwegian sovereign pension fund. Nina Röhrbein assesses the changes
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Currency Management: Awkward guidance
Anthony Harrington listens to currency managers’ frustrations as US dollar certainties melt into fog from the Fed
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Features
The age of the default fund
UK DC pensions will see a boost in members and assets as auto-enrolment kicks in over the coming years. Sally Ling looks at best practice for governance and default funds
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Features
African ESG dilemmas
This year’s Principles for Responsible Investment in Person conference in Cape Town, South Africa, focused on two things – ESG issues and Africa.
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Features
Change is afoot in the corridors of Brussels
Not a month goes by now, it seems, without some new major development in EU policy. First came the final reporting guidelines for the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), published by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in September.
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Features
Adding the best of DB to DC plans
In the final article in the current series, Nicholas Lyster and Amin Rajan argue that despite the demise of DB plans, the baby is unlikely to be thrown away with the bath water
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Features
Politics and sovereign wealth
Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global is now the third-largest institutional investor in the world, after Japan’s Government Pension Fund and China’s SAFE
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Features
In the pipeline
It’s a fine September morning and I am over the North Sea in a helicopter together with Geert, our bright young spark in the investment department. But it’s not just a day out and we are all dressed in hard hats and waterproofs since we are on our way visit a gas installation. Our proposed investment is nowhere to be seen, though, as it is a share in a gas pipeline network on the seabed.
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FeaturesTime for an overhaul
With yields rising and pension schemes continuing to increase their allocation to bonds, Peter Ball asks how trustees can plug the deficit in their schemes
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FeaturesPolish reform: A lot not to like
Managers of Polish pension funds can at least be grateful their industry has not been entirely nationalised
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Features
IORP II: Keep it proportional
PensionsEurope gives a general thumbs-up to Brussels’ planned improvements to governance standards for occupational pensions
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Features
Focus Group: The real thing
Just under half of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey expect their allocation to real assets to increase a little over the next five years. On average, respondents currently invest 24.4% of their fund in real assets – although some investors have a more expansive definition for the term than others. One fund included the 5% it has in private equity, for example; two others included their listed equities; and two even included bonds, without specifying whether these were inflation-indexed.
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Features
Mixed evidence on financialisation
Lorenzo Naranjo and Carmen Stefanescu note that commodity futures volatility has been rising since the era of ‘financialisation’ – but also that the correlation with equity market volatility long pre-dates this period
