All articles by IPE staff – Page 33
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Features
Social partners take step into the future
Few European pension funds have made as much impact in a short space of time as MetallRente, the German industry-wide pension fund founded in 2001 by the labour union IG Metall and the employers’ association Gesamtmetall for employees of the metal and electrical industries. Such has been the success of ...
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Features
A way to smooth out future shock
The National Pensions Reserve Fund was set up two years ago, to meet some of Ireland’s future public pension liabilities. Pension costs – as elsewhere – are expected to rise significantly as the population ages, and assets of the fund will be drawn down by future ministers for finance starting ...
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Features
Setting a standard on governance
The BT Pension Scheme (BTPS), winner of this year’s IPE Silver Award for Corporate Pension Fund of the year, is the largest defined benefit (DB) company pension scheme in the UK. The fund has an impressive 365,811 members in total, comprising 91,692 contributing members, 95,829 deferred pensioners and 178,290 pensioners. ...
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Features
Specialised IT helps meet needs of medical sector
The VKG pension fund in Belgium, established more than three decades ago, aims to create decent pensions for the country’s doctors, dentists and pharmacists. The fund is geared mainly towards independent professionals, because, it says, their first pillar state pension provision is very weak. VKG offers a service to its ...
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Features
High-quality service and investment performance
This fund is a Polish mandatory, defined contribution, open pension fund. The state-owned Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) collects and allocates pension contributions to open pension funds, with each individual member contributing 7.3% of their gross salary on a monthly basis. The main aims of the fund, which was established in ...
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Features
Solid investment for self-employed professionals
The national pensions and benefit fund for Italy’s self-employed architects and engineers, Inarcassa, has e2.3 billion under management. Since privatisation in 1995, it has been upgrading its systems and financial management to compete independently, without state support. Investment strategy is determined by a national delegates’ committee, consisting of some 200 ...
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Special Report
From periphery to mainstream
Dutch superfund ABP has been actively involved in both socially responsible investment (SRI) and corporate governance since the mid-1990s. Since then, ABP has undertaken a whole array of national and international activities to include SRI and corporate governance in its mainstream investment processes. ABP is one of the leaders in ...
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Features
Doesn’t suit you, Sir
The other day Belle and I went into a car showroom. When we finally got to see a salesman, he said: “You’ll want a Volvo estate.” “Certainly not, we want a Lotus Elise,” I said. “Sorry, couldn’t sell you that. A beast like you would look silly, the Volvo it ...
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Features
Revised legislation aims to strengthen fund assets
In Austria, pensions have hit the headlines over the past year. The run-up to June’s passing of the pensions reform bill by the Austrian parliament was marked by national strikes and demonstrations as points of the bill were hotly opposed. In the end, concessions had to be made on key ...
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Features
Focus has been on second pillar pensions
The Brussels-based Belgian Pension Fund Association (BPFA) has found itself involved in two main areas in the past year or so: the implementation of the new law on second-pillar pensions and the investments results of Belgian funds during 2002. In addition, the BPFA has undergone some internal restructuring as a ...
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Features
Funds struggle to meet their capital requirements
Danish funds suffered more than many from the market meltdown. Much of Denmark’s pension money is based on a 4.5% minimum benefit guarantee, which was the rate for 12 years until 1994. The falls in share prices and interest rates, combined with the high guarantee, have made it difficult for ...
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Features
Effecting domestic pension reforms takes centre stage
As with pension fund associations elsewhere across Europe, the Association Française des Regimes et Fonds de Pension (Afpen) has found itself devoting a large amount of its time to domestic pensions reform, and, to a lesser extent, the European pensions directive for occupational schemes. “These reforms are the widest-ranging set ...
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Features
Employers get greater flexibility in making fund transfers
It has been a good year for Finland’s Association of Pension Foundations. In July legislation came into effect allowing employers to transfer schemes from pension companies to funds and foundations. Finland has a generous earnings-related first pillar system, partly funded but mostly PAYG. There is no ceiling on earnings and ...
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Features
For a small fee...
Convention has it that the long-term benchmark is the ‘strategy’, and the shorter-term deviations are the ‘tactics’. More important than the label is by whom and how these long-term decisions are made. There was a time when the trustee decision was to follow the herd, and the herd moved at ...
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Features
Making a smooth transition to a new pension market
The Riester reforms continue to dominate the German pensions landscape and the Heidelberg-based German occupational pension fund association, Arbeitsgemeinschaft fuer Betriebliche Altersversorgung (ABA), says its main role now is to ensure a continued smooth transition to the new market, good communication and education of pension fund members and to get ...
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Features
Higher on agenda
It’s been a difficult year for the UK pensions industry. Continued adverse market conditions, a flurry of new government legislation, increasing scheme maturity and pension fund deficit stories hitting the front pages of the national press have left the UK to think long and hard about how it should be ...
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Features
Slow progress awaits reforms
Since the law regarding the creation of new pension funds in Italy came into force in 1993 the market has been developing slowly. A significant number of new pension funds are now fully operational but assets and subscribers are still low. However, 2002 was a good year for the consolidation ...
