Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 687
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Features
Expectations management
There’s nothing wrong with pension funds per se, according to EFRP chairman Alan Pickering, rather it’s our outdated expectations of what they ought to deliver. Falling markets, increasing longevity, lower birth rates and annuity level have done no more than show the unsustainability of retirement levels. “People around the world ...
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Features
Benign Belgian flexibility
Market volatility has not precipitated any sharp changes of direction among Belgian pension funds, according to Hervé Noël the head of portfolio management at Tractebel Pension Funds in Brussels. Furthermore, the regulator, the Office de Controle des Assurances/Controledienst voor Verzekeringen (OCA/CDV) is using a light hand on the tiller. “Until ...
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Features
Nightmare on ALM street
American defined benefit (DB) pension funds may become the next nightmare for US corporations. David Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor’s index committee, predicts that pension contributions will replace stock options as the big corporate accounting issue next year. The almost three year severe stock market downturn has deeply damaged ...
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Features
Managing disability costs in Canada
Like many jurisdictions around the world, Canada is experiencing significant increases in benefit costs, notably medical and disability costs. Several factors contribute to disability cost increases but there are three major factors common to many countries – the ageing work force, stress and depression, and a strained healthcare system. For ...
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Features
Time for liability-driven benchmarks
We are all told early on in pensions investment theory that you can’t invest without incurring risk and that, indeed, you have to accept risk to achieve reward. Now, after years of investing in the equity market, apparently without risk, as returns rolled in without having to worry , it ...
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Features
‘Transformation of Pension Systems in Central and Eastern Europe'
This is a book edited and written by social policy academics on the state pensions systems of the “Visegard four” central European states (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and the three Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). It provides a brief overview of their respective social security systems before ...
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Features
Time for 'the negative option'
Italy has staked the future of its fledgling second pillar pension system on defined contribution (DC) schemes. The legal framework for the system was set up as part of the pension reforms of two former prime ministers Giuliano Amato in 1993 and Lamberto Dini in 1995. However, it has been ...
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Features
Out of one comparto and into another
One sign that the new occupational DC plans in Italy are shifting into a higher gear is the beginning of a move from monocomparto schemes, which offer members a single line of investment – usually a balanced portfolio – to multicomparto schemes that offer a choice of investments. Investment choice ...
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Features
Covip lays down the law
Much of the future of Italy’s new complementary DC plans lies in the hands of the Commissione Vigilanza sui Fondi Pensione (Covip), which was set up to regulate them. Covip has been severely criticised by pension funds for what they see as the excessive bureaucracy of the approval process. It ...
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Features
Price of refusing placements
Go executive, go north, west, east or south, if your master bids you. This is one of the uncompromising findings of an expatriate survey among major multinationals by consultants Mercer of a group of major multinationals, most of which were companies with headquarters in continental Europe or the UK. According ...
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Special Report
Message from on high
Hermes, the pensions management firm, wholly-owned by the BT pension scheme, is living up to its moniker with the unveiling of its new corporate governance charter – ‘The Hermes Principles’, which it believes could send an important message to institutional shareholders about how they invest in companies. The 10 principles, ...
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Features
Staying out of the headlines
Eighteen months ago employee benefits accounting was considered a fairly dull subject, of little interest to anyone not directly involved in annual reporting activity. In recent months employee benefits accounting has received huge media interest and all stakeholders are now paying attention. What catapulted employee benefits accounting to the top ...
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Features
Going regional to go global
Recently, Angelien Kemna took the paradoxical step at ING Investment Management of changing her role from global CIO to that of European CIO and at the same time CEO, sharing the rest of the globe with her opposite numbers in the US and Asia-Pacific. A move made so the group, ...
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Features
Knowing how you're doing
As the markets continue to go through difficult and unsettled times, investors are demanding more reporting on performance and attribution, both in terms of frequency and depth. Funds and asset managers are under pressure to meet international standards of reporting and to make their reports more accessible, including daily, if ...
