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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Clearing made easier and more resilient, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs
CCP clearing is highly concentrated in a few financial centres around the globe, with the City of London playing a very important role
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Opinion Pieces
Germany's first-pillar pension reform plans: tough to meet expectations
How would you design your asset allocation if you were building a portfolio from scratch? This is the question facing the governors of Germany’s new state pension buffer fund, the grandly titled ‘Generationenkapital’ (Generational Capital) fund. The expectations are high.
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Opinion Pieces
Time for honesty in the face of the ESG backlash
Sustainable finance is a broad church: it covers small investors whose clients want their capital to benefit society through to big managers who only consider environmental and social issues if they stand to make money.
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Opinion Pieces
Denmark: Seeking answers on unlisted valuations
The perennial problem of how unlisted assets should be valued has reared its head in Denmark. Data collated by one financial adviser on pension funds’ 2022 private equity investments has led to worries about an apparent black-box approach to valuation processes.
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Opinion Pieces
Full steam ahead for UK de-risking market
This year is set to be the largest yet for the UK defined benefit (DB) pensions de-risking market, with at least £40bn (€45.8bn) in bulk annuity transactions and £20bn in longevity hedges expected to be completed, according to WTW’s latest de-risking report.
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Climate-related scenario analysis – part of the problem or part of the solution?
‘I’ve yet to see a board of trustees that has made significant changes to its asset allocation as a result of scenario analysis,’ says Julis Pursaill at Cushon
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: And if we trusted the market to improve ESG information?
What trust would one put in financial information that is solely reserved for investors and not published, that no independent analyst could challenge, given that the regulator would have no way of guaranteeing its veracity either?
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Escape from Flatland
A two-dimensional, return-and-volatility view of investments may not allow you to see important risks
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Opinion Pieces
People power: a hidden strength of public pension funds
Public and sovereign pension funds face a unique set of challenges, sometimes related to resource constraints and often to the glare of open scrutiny.
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Opinion Pieces
Germany’s equity pension plan raises questions
The current legislative period could bring substantial changes to Germany’s pension system. The government is pursuing reforms to fund first-pillar pensions through a buffer fund invested in equities, although there is little consensus on its feasibility.
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Opinion Pieces
European authorities must focus on derivatives risk
Opinions may differ on whether Brexit has had a positive or negative impact on either of the parties involved. However, it could be argued that an idiosyncratic event such as the liquidity crisis that took place in the United Kingdom at the end of September could have been averted, had the country been part of the bloc. Investors lost confidence in the UK government, now more isolated than before Brexit, and its ability to maintain its fiscal balance, after the announcement of a massive fiscal spending plan at the end of September. That sent yields on UK Gilts soaring and led to a spiralling lack of liquidity, as pension funds rushed to post collateral on their interest-rate derivative positions.
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Opinion Pieces
COP15: Biodiversity develops investment ecosystem
Biodiversity is fast catching up with climate change as a priority for investors and supervisors, and developments last year have set the stage for a productive 2023.
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Beyond Article 9, is there a regulation to promote real sustainability?
Recent events have shown how anticipating forthcoming clarification on the application of a text that has been published since 2019 has created such confusion that many asset managers have had to reclassify a large number of their funds from Article 9 to Article 8.
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Why LGBTIQ+ inclusion should matter to investors
We would like to thank Frank Wagemans of Achmea IM for his extensive input, which we highly appreciate
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Gilts crisis won’t undermine attractions of private markets for long-term investors
Many of the government’s ambitions to reboot growth in the UK economy require solutions which private assets are well equipped and prepared to provide in a timely manner
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Alternative risk premia strategies stand tall amid turmoil
While bond and equity markets have been pummeled in 2022, Alternative Risk Premia strategies have at last been able to demonstrate their diversification prowess. Will this year’s performance restore investor confidence in these strategies after the painful results of 2020?
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Net-zero-aligned investment in fossil fuels
Incentivising carbon capture would free institutional investors from having to make decisions about the climate
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Opinion Pieces
Meloni grapples with Italy’s pension woes
Reforms usually follow general elections, regardless of the political system. Italy is no different. The most generous country in Europe in terms of pension payments, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Italy spends the equivalent of 15.6% of GDP on pensions.
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Opinion Pieces
Dutch pensions reform: A never ending story
In the last two years, nearly all my contributions for this section have been about the ongoing reform of the Dutch pension system, which will involve the transfer of defined-benefit (DB) accruals to a defined-contribution (DC) setting.
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Opinion Pieces
Time to rethink defined contribution pensions design
This year is shaping up to be the worst for investment returns since before the great financial crisis, according to IPE’s latest performance analysis of the leading European pension funds.
