All Securities Services articles – Page 40
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Features
Learning the lessons
The events of 11 September exposed weaknesses in the US securities trading, clearing and settlement infrastructure. Inadequate disaster recovery arrangements by key institutions, the over-concentration of processes in too few organisations, and the lack of redundancy in communication networks are among the issues local firms, industry bodies and regulators are ...
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Features
Battling over the benchmark
One of the most significant and explosive cases of the year got underway at London’s High Court last month. Significant, because the ramifications for the pensions industry are enormous, and explosive because neither side can afford to blink first in a case that could run for up to eight weeks. ...
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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
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
Proving cross-border alliances can work
While mergers and acquisitions have been two-a-penny within the custody sphere in recent years, partnerships between global custodians are a far rarer beast. Despite the very public scepticism of many of its fellow custodians, however, Mellon Trust has chosen to forge not one but three strategic alliances: its recent link-up ...
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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
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
Spezialfonds' growth rate eases
Is the rate of expansion of the German institutional investment market on the wane? The vehicle most used by local institutional investors is the Spezialfond and according to this year’s Kandlbinder report which is issued as separate supplement with this issue of IPE, the rate of growth of these vehicles ...
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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
Looking to outsiders
Pension funds in Europe have chosen to outsource their back office and IT activities for two main reasons. The first is that fund administration is often not a core activity. A pension plan’s primary task is the overall management of the plan. Specialised service providers can often run non-core activities ...
