UK Comment – Page 2
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Opinion PiecesInterview: Elizabeth Fernando on NEST’s new thematic strategy
Sustainability focus underlines NEST’s growing importance as a UK institutional investor
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Opinion PiecesUK equities: stop tinkering and focus on the long term
As the UK heads for a general election this year, both major parties (Labour and Conservative) will be proclaiming their solutions to the UK’s perennial problems of chronically low levels of investment, a dearth of new innovative companies and disappointing growth.
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Opinion PiecesMansion House reforms: UK government should embrace long-term thinking to boost the economy
Other countries have been far better than the UK at creating long-term strategies that have been maintained way beyond the five-year or shorter electoral timescales on which UK politicians focus
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Unequal voting rights must be phased out
Weakening protections around dual class share structures will not deliver the desired benefits
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Opinion PiecesLondon’s new Lord Mayor sets out his stall for the City as a centre for global problem solving
The newly elected Lord Mayor of the City of London Michael Mainelli is keen to position the City as a global problem solving hub and not just a financial services centre
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Opinion PiecesDoes the UK really need to consolidate thousands of DB schemes?
The UK’s so-called Mansion House Reforms are under way. This cluster of policies takes its name from the residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, which is the venue for a regular set-piece policy speech by British chancellors of the exchequer, the latest of whom is Jeremy Hunt.
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Opinion PiecesLondon’s Lord Mayor Nicholas Lyons outlines his plan to raise £50bn from pension funds for UK growth assets
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This aphorism can perhaps well describe the current state of the UK’s investment ecosystem. Despite Europe’s largest pension market at £2.5trn (€2.9trn), the UK economy has been starved of risk capital through a series of legislative and regulatory decisions.
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Opinion PiecesCambridge and Westminster: a tale of two pension schemes
The Houses of Parliament and Cambridge University are two venerable British institutions. But the differences in how they run their pension arrangements illustrate the contrast between the UK-style pooled liability-driven investment (LDI) and a more traditional form of pension investing, no longer as popular in the UK but still common elsewhere.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: How to prepare your scheme for the buyout backlog
Schemes must proactively prepare for major delays in risk transfers
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Opinion PiecesUK venture capital: spinning out for success
Academic research produces excellent technology and medical firms, but the funding is not always available to take things further
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: UK defined contribution market
Many investors nearing retirement are unable or unwilling to take on the volatility associated with a more aggressive portfolio
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Australian-style reforms can unlock green growth and boost pension performance
Rewriting UK pension rules could unlock green growth, directing much-needed investment into sustainable infrastructure
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Differentiation – the future of professional pension trusteeship
When purchasing professional services, choice is good. Differentiated choice is even better.
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Opinion PiecesBlame will not solve the issues raised by the LDI crisis
The chain of events that led to the UK’s liability-driven investment (LDI) crisis, a high-profile inquiry by the UK Parliament, and a time of anxiety and introspection in the country’s pension industry, started well before then prime minister Liz Truss’s government and its somewhat reckless ‘growth plan’.
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Opinion PiecesCDC: finally off the starting blocks
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) last month approved the Royal Mail Collective Pension Plan as the first registered collective defined contribution (CDC) scheme in the UK
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: A landmark moment for British pensions
What is it the British pension savers want, and until now have been denied in private sector pensions?
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Opinion PiecesGuest viewpoint: LDI regulation should not ignore private asset solutions
In the aftermath of the liability-driven investing (LDI) crisis, The Pensions Regulator (TPR) in the UK drew up guidelines for pension funds to improve the resilience of LDI strategies. These guidelines primarily aim to support the creation of liquidity buffers so that pension funds can withstand yield shocks. To that end, the guidelines advise pension funds to conduct stress tests and identify suitable collateral with respect to both leveraged and unleveraged LDI strategies using yield-shock scenarios.
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Opinion PiecesFull 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 PiecesEuropean 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 PiecesGuest viewpoint: The UK pensions sector should be more aggressive on consolidation
UK pension assets across both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) funds are too fragmented, and our schemes, even the biggest, are sub-scale. Consolidation is not the answer to everything, but it is a big part of the solution.
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