Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 737
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Features
Doctors' healthy fund
Like most Danish pension funds, the Copenhagen-based Laegernes Pensionskasse (LPK) is a defined contribution (DC) arrangement, but operates under the guaranteed return basis. This requirement is raising real concerns in parts of the pensions and insurance sectors, since they both work under the insurance law. “We have different rates of ...
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Features
Getting to acceptable risk levels
A number of pension funds may well face a big test at their next actuarial valuation. With a combination of falling stock markets, low bond yields and increasing life expectancy pension fund solvency levels are coming under severe pressure. No wonder that in the UK the government has just announced ...
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Features
Why core plus strategies win
Over the past 20 years, as real estate has come to be an accepted part of a diversified institutional investment portfolio, strategies for investment in real estate have expanded across the entire risk/return spectrum. Investment options now range from low risk/low volatility strategies, some of which offer almost bond-type characteristics, ...
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Features
Role of funds checked by survey
A recent survey into institutional investment in property1 has found that the available benchmarks reflect the true market situation, despite a lack of clarity both in the questionnaires used to obtain data and the categories used to report the findings. The study, by DTZ Research on behalf of Royal & ...
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Features
It's not all one-way traffic
Key to the issue of outsourcing is whether to manage assets in-house or to appoint a third party investment manager. According to George Urquhart of the WM Company, internal managers are finding themselves under pressure from tight human resource budgets while trustees and plan sponsors are under pressure from consultants ...
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Features
Putting the case for staying in-house
The issue of whether or not a pension scheme should be administered in-house or outsourced could be boiled down to two words – effectiveness and efficiency! Can my scheme be more effectively and efficiently managed in-house than having the work outsourced. Before attempting to answer that question, we have to ...
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Features
Wake-up call to suppliers
Reluctance to outsource pension scheme administration has continued for the eighth year running, according to the Capita Hartshead Annual Pension Scheme Administration Survey. This is despite an overall trend in industry in favour of outsourcing non-core functions, and despite clear cost advantages. The survey results were based on a questionnaire ...
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Features
Europe's steady evolution
Three broad developments in European pensions are creating new business opportunities for third party fund administrators. The first is the move towards defined contribution (DC) schemes in countries like Italy and Germany. Germany’s first DC products, Pensionsfonds promoted by social security minister Walter Reister, are expected to produce a flow ...
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Features
What to do when the world changes
As part of our coverage of the aftermath of the tragedy in the US on September 11, we invited pension funds to air their feelings and views in a special Off the Record considering the impact of the terrible events on our industry going forward. Your responses were both pertinent ...
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Features
Working the corridors of power
Since its formation in 1981 the European Federation for Retirement Provision has undergone dramatic structural changes, whilst remaining faithful to the aims set out at its first gathering in Paris in September of that year. Originally established under a brief constitution, the stated purpose of the organisation was to “represent ...
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Features
Growth continues unabated
Developments in the past year were very encouraging. The data for the year 2000 gives the following picture of the Pensionskassen market in Austria: q assets administered by Pensionskassen in Austria in 2000 were ATS110bn (e8bn), an increase of 9% compared to the year 1999; q some 284,000 beneficiaries are ...
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Features
Opening up the second pillar
Belgian retirement provision is structured around a three-pillar system. Pillar one is a ‘pay-as- you-go’ system organised by the government on the basis of social security contributions, also known as a repartition system. Pillar two consists of supplementary pension schemes organised on a collective basis by a company or group ...
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Features
Worries about pension guarantees
Pension guarantees have been the hottest topic in the Danish pension debate in recent years. Another issue high on the agenda is the planned transition from book value to fair value in the accounts. The Danish pension system first pillar The ‘Folkepension’ is administered by the state and is ...
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Features
Wide-ranging review under way
In Finland, the provision of statutory employment pension cover in the private sector has been designated to private pension institutions. The types of competing pension institutions are pension foundations, pension funds and employment pension insurance companies. Additionally, the employment pension insurance companies compete with each other for clients. Objectives ...
