Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 704
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Features
Risk tools are to hand
With the increasing globalisation of investment, the growing complexity in instruments and the rise of alternative investment strategies, there is a greater need than ever for investors to be able to measure, monitor and control their risks. In addition to traditional measures such as tracking error and benchmarks, over the ...
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Features
Immunising the pensions at risk
In the face of market volatility and accounting standards, notably FRS17, pensions funds are showing increasing interest in ‘immunising’ their portfolios from the series of risks that they face – principally interest risk, inflation risk and market risk The most publicised example of this, so far, has been the decision ...
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Features
Judgement by your peers
Now 60% of UK pension funds have a customised benchmark, with the incidence even stronger among the larger funds. This is reminiscent of the position in the early 1970s, when funds generally had their own benchmark. Some funds were consistently outperforming their customised benchmarks but clearly underperforming their peers. When ...
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Features
'The role of annuity markets in financing retirement'
This is a welcome new study, which will appeal both to the general reader and to those seeking to understand the structure and valuation of annuities. Although based on US material and experience, it comes at a time when there is much debate in the UK and elsewhere about whether ...
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Features
Putting new building blocks in place
The pension scheme for construction industry workers in Ireland is very different to other Irish plans. Not only is it an industry-wide scheme, it is also a statutory scheme. “Apart from the national social welfare system, ours is the only statutory scheme in Ireland,” says Pat Ferguson, administrator of the ...
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Features
Fitting neatly into bond portfolios
Pfandbriefe are essentially a form of asset-backed security that is primarily issued by the German mortgage banks to refinance their loan portfolios. Making up some 20% of the total lending business in Germany, the mortgage banks have been restricted by the German Mortgage Bank Act to lending on residential and ...
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Features
Market-friendly faces needed
Hungary’s change of government following the April elections heralds more changes for the pensions industry. The centre-right Fidesz government of prime minister Victor Orban lost by a narrow majority to the Hungarian Socialist Party/Alliance of Free Democrats coalition headed by former finance minister Peter Medgyessy. Although left of centre on ...
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Features
Second pillar funds still have to overcome timing
Hungarian mandatory and voluntary pension funds have broadly similar investment limits, with two exceptions. Second pillar funds, unlike third-pillar ones, cannot invest directly into real estate (although they can do so through real estate investment units). They also have a 50% maximum limit on equity investment against 60% for third-pillar ...
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Features
Reacting to local conditions
The Northern Ireland (NI) economy is made up of small businesses – the figures from the Equality Commission that monitors employment patterns in the province for businesses over 11 employees, show that of the 3,800 businesses in the private sector, over 2,700 had less than 50 employees in 2000, and ...
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Features
Capture 'pooling' savings with captives
With an increased focus from both human resources and finance on cost-effective employee benefit programmes, we continue to seek ways to contain cost while maximising benefit attractiveness. Increasingly, companies are resorting to the next level of creativity in order to squeeze the bottom line costs, without neces-sarily taking away from ...
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Features
Keeping tabs on 100 schemes
With more than 60,000 employees worldwide, the basic retirement benefit guideline at British American Tobacco (BAT) is that each scheme should be competitive in relation to local market practice. “Our employees are literally scattered around the globe, with no real concentration in any one country. Trying to coordinate our retirement ...
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Features
Steel schemes break mould
When the employers and the trade unions in the Belgian metal industry came together in 1999 to discuss the formation of what was to become Le Fonds de Pension Metal, they were conscious they were breaking the mould. It was the first time that a sector-wide plan had been contemplated ...
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Features
The shape of things to come
The new shape of the Belgian pension fund industry is preoccupying Karel Stroobants, the former general manager of the VKG/CPM pension fund and just re-elected as president of the Belgian Pension Funds Association. “I want to do everything possible to put the new Belgian pensions law into place, once it ...
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Features
Integrale's long track record
Belgium has a long tradition of pension provision that has undergone many reforms through the years. Some players have been present in this market since its very early days, adapting themselves to the different social environments. Liège-based Integrale is one of them. Decades ago the way the Belgian state managed ...
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Features
Swedes mass migrate to DC
The transformation of the Swedish pension system since the mid 1990s is perhaps the most comprehensive endorsement of the defined contribution (DC) scheme in Europe. More than two million people have been moved into second pillar contribution-based plans in the space of five or six years. The first pillar has ...
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Features
Upsetting the apple cart
Defined contribution (DC) is poised to make a clean sweep of collectively agreed nationwide pension schemes in Sweden. One after the other, these schemes have become contribution-based. In 1996 the plan for blue collar workers in the private sector was changed from a defined benefit (DB) to DC scheme, known ...
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Features
'IKEA of pensions insurance'
The pension insurance society for Sweden’s central government employees, commonly known as Kåpan, is currently at the centre of a switch from DB to DC systems. Kåpan, whose official name is FSO, was started 10 years ago to provide pension insurance for 220,000 members of three leading trade unions. In ...
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Features
Minister involves ABA at highest level
The ABA, the German Occupational Pensions Association, has called on labour minister Walter Riester to defer his plans to scrap deferred compensation in 2008. Speaking at the association’s annual conference in Bonn, the chairman of the ABA Boy-Jürgen Andresen, said he would prefer to see the deferred compensation scheme, remain ...
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Features
Making pensions popular
Simplification was the topic firmly on the agenda at the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) annual conference in Brighton. “The pendulum has swung too far in favour of regulation and complexity”, Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the conference. Hardly a day goes by without ...
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Features
'Jigsaw pieces in place'
If the European Court of Justice follows the opinion of the advocate general in the Danner v Finland case on pensions taxation, this would be the first attempt made to abolish all obstacle relating to pensions tax issues. This view was expressed by Leonardo Sforza of consultants Hewitt Associates at ...
