Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 370
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Country Report
Italy: Amundi SGR SpA Seconda Pensione Fondo Pensione Aperto
The supplementary pension fund of Amundi Asset Management is a defined contribution plan, founded in 1999. Subscription is voluntary and open to employees of Amundi and other individuals, independent of profession.
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Country Report
Italy: Fondo Pensione Complementare Pegaso
Fondo Pensione Complementare Pegaso was founded in 1997 as the contractual pension fund for the Italian utilities sector. Its membership base consists of mainly electricity, gas and water companies, at present it has around 500 member companies.
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Country Report
Italy: Hamstrung by law 703
Armando Piccinno reviews Italian pension funds’ asset allocation behaviour
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Features
Risk abides, man changes his mind
Financial risks grow and subside with economic cycles but always remain. Human attitudes towards them also vary. Arguably they matter more and often change the most. Allianz Global Investors’ first RiskMonitor survey, conducted in conjunction with IPE, paints a picture of pension funds’ current attitudes to risk and how they are changing.
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Features
Actual results may vary
On Friday 10 June, the Dutch government, together with employer and employee representatives, signed a comprehensive agreement to drastically reform the Dutch pension system.
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Features
Easier said than done
Often the solution to a problem is as complex as the problem itself. And a lot of things are easier said than done.
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Features
What do regulators need?
Pension regulators come in a variety of shapes and forms. Sometimes those forms change to reflect prevailing wisdom on the best constitution of financial regulatory and supervisory bodies.
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Features
Not everyone loves the Pensions Agreement
After much wrangling, heel-dragging and finger-pointing, the Dutch government and social partners have hammered out a Pensions Agreement. In mid-June, the social partners and the cabinet unveiled an agreement that aims to increase the official retirement age for the first pillar (AOW) to 66 in 2020 and to 67 in 2025. First pillar benefits will be raised an extra 0.6% annually, amounting to indexation in line with real earned wages, a major demand of umbrella union FNV. Early retirement will remain an option, but against a loss of 6.5% of the AOW for each year.
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Features
MNOPF to reshape UK fiduciary landscape?
When the Merchant Navy Officers’ Pension Fund (MNOPF) announced it was appointing Towers Watson as delegated CIO, the UK pension industry took notice. While the £3.3bn (€3.7bn) scheme may not be big compared with some of the Dutch pension giants, it is influential in the UK, especially with its appointment establishing Towers in UK fiduciary management.
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Features
AIMA pushes for increased alignment
Eat your own cooking – that is the advice of CalPERS’s Kurt Silberstein, who recommends hedge fund managers add a little more of themselves to the pot if they want to entice pension funds to the table. In common parlance, hedge funds must do more to ‘align interests’ with investors.
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Features
Bernardino: Solvency II not a simple exercise
With the introduction of Solvency II less than a year and a half away, the pensions industry is still unclear what kind of regime it will face and how aspects of the Directive, drafted for insurance companies, may be applied to diverse European pensions.
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Features
Systemic reforms just a utopian dream
Experts and analysts believe the idea of a systemic reform of France’s pension industry faces major hurdles and that it is unlikely to be implemented due to funding and political wrangling. They also say that building up a new pension regime from scratch would be the best way to simplify the French system and avoid increasing the deficit.
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Features
Pointless chatter
Without any irony, the IASB is about to give you the opportunity to take part in a consultation process on the future shape of its entire work plan. As a 15 June IASB meeting paper explains: “The consultation process was introduced by the trustees of the IFRS Foundation in 2010 in response to comments received during the constitution review of the IFRS Foundation.” A good time to revisit pension plan measurement? Reality check.
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FeaturesInvestment innovations: a scorecard
Pension plans have an open mind about innovations, say Neeraj Sahai, Jim McCaughan and Amin Rajan
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Opinion Pieces
Lee Hollingworth - Head of Defined Contribution at Hymans Robertson
“In our view, the open market option should be the default for all schemes”
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Features
Convergence over harmonisation
Niels Kortleve, Barthold Kuipers and Wilfried Mulder offer reasons why the European Commission should focus on convergence of EU pension regulation rather than harmonisation
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Features
Pressure to scale up to hold down costs
Gail Moss looks at how multinational companies are grappling with pension scheme underfunding in the face of rising longevity pension scheme underfunding in the face of rising longevity
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Features
Keen on illiquidity
Peter Wallach of the UK’s Merseyside Pension Fund tells Nina Röhrbein how the scheme’s philosophy affects its investment strategy
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Features
Should fiduciaries manage assets?
Anton Van Nunen writes on the changing role of fiduciary managers. Should they manage pension assets themselves despite the potential conflict of interest?
