All Securities Services articles – Page 20
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Features
Return to balanced?
Changing views in the pensions industry on the role of active management within portfolios has led to a rise in new balanced mandates, say consultants. But is it really best to use a single investment house for such a wide variety of different assets? Anthony Ashton, head of global client ...
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Features
Alpha transport - exploiting inefficient markets
Institutional investment portfolios have typically been constructed around a strategic policy portfolio and where investors believed that they could identify managers with skill, they adopted an active strategy to add value relative to that benchmark. Where active management is adopted there are two sources of return – the return attributable ...
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Features
Structures for all seasons
The pension fund environment has changed tremendously over the past few years, with long-term objectives tending to be replaced by a shorter-term focus. These changes have been predominantly driven by new accounting standards, evolving regulation and particularly adverse financial markets. The new IAS 19 accounting rules have repositioned corporates’ pension ...
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Features
Positive times ahead
After the sharp fall in receipts since the record year 1998, from €66bn then to barely one-third of that in 2003, Spezialfonds suffered a real slump in 2004. The last time that receipts were less than the €3.7bn collected was back in 1985. But the sector was still able to ...
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Features
Moving in right direction
The Greek securities services market has in the past been something of a backwater. But recent market infrastructure and pensions reforms have given global custodians hope that there are good times ahead. Like many other countries in Europe, Greece is facing a growing pensions liability problem and the government has ...
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Features
Simulating DC outcomes
Defined contribution (DC) pension schemes are complicated financial products. However, they are ideal subjects for stochastic simulation methods1, and research on them has developed to the point where we now have the basis of a commercially feasible DC pension model2. This article begins by explaining the structure of this model. ...
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Features
Consultants have a role to play
Although many smaller pension funds do not find it necessary to take on the services of a custodian, it becomes necessary at a certain level of complexity. In the UK, at least, if a fund only invests in pooled funds, there is no need for a custodian since the pooled ...
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Features
Message in a bottle
The spectre of regulation, interference by Europe’s political classes and the perils of industry complacency joined those hardy perennials standards and market practice at the top of the agenda at Sibos – the annual payments and securities processing jamboree organised by messaging co-operative SWIFT, held this year in Copenhagen. Although ...
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Features
Approach to IT still uneven
Performance and risk are growing concerns at Austrian pension funds and to better measure and manage these factors, the funds are implementing a range of third-party and in-house developed applications. Some funds are using spreadsheets or programming applications from scratch, while others are making use of the performance and risk ...
