All Securities Services articles – Page 36
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Features
Ready for a revolution
Asset management is a relatively young industry, which has become increasingly popular over the past 20 years. Rising incomes and demographic changes in the developed economies has meant more opportunities and a greater need to save. Likewise, a greater need for professional management has emerged in the wake of the ...
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Features
Performance and attribution analysis
Such a high-profile public fund as the NPRF needed watertight systems to monitor both the performance and risk profiles of the investment managers appointed. For this, the NTMA looked to specialist providers in the market. On the performance side, performance analysis outfit StatPro picked up the mandate to provide its ...
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Features
Custody award surprises competitors
One appointment by the NTMA that caused some surprise in the market was that of ABN Amro Mellon to the position of fund custodian. Observers had predicted that one of the larger custody players in Europe in terms of assets under custody might pick up the brief. Certainly with IR£8bn ...
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Features
Choosing from the world's best
Once the decision was taken that the National Treasury Management Agency would look after the overall management of the National Pensions Reserve Fund, the need was to put together a specialist in-house team for the job. John Corrigan of the NTMA (the former director of funding and debt management) was ...
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Features
What's value added any more?
‘Value added’ has become a catchphrase in the global custody vocabulary. An all-embracing concept, it has been habitually applied to any service offered beyond the traditional core custody offerings of safekeeping and settlement. However, the concept of what adds value is coming under the microscope as pension funds and fund ...
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Features
Always looking for more
Custody today is a commodity – or so the line goes. And with the number of providers in the market steadily diminishing and technology levelling the playing field, who’s going to argue? Talk to Europe’s pension funds, however, and the debate on the role of custodians becomes less clear-cut. How ...
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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
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
Europe still struggling
As the dust settles on the Deutsche Börse and Clearstream merger, the European clearing and settlement picture is no clearer. High costs and inefficient market practices still dominate and many institutions – particularly investment management firms – are struggling to implement straight-through processing (STP) solutions. Put simply, STP is a ...
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Features
Why everyone wins with z-scores
The publication of the first performance test of the Dutch industrywide funds has put the spotlight on the Netherlands’ unique system of pension fund rating – known as the z-score. The test is an assessment of how funds have measured up to their investment strategies in the years since the ...
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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
Upstaging the locals
Continental Europe may be on the cusp of an investment revolution, but it seems increasingly questionable whether many of those banks that make up the (already much depleted) ranks of the region’s local custody providers will still be around to reap the coming bounty. In recent years only the UK ...
