UK - French business school EDHEC Risk-Institute has marked the launch of its European Risk-Institute with the opening of its London base.

The school, which opened a campus in Singapore last year, said its London outlet would serve as "platform for the continued generation and dissemination of academic insights".

Professor Noël Amenc, director of EDHEC-Risk Institute, added: "With the benefit of our London presence, which brings us even closer to many of the financial institutions we collaborate with, we aim to further strengthen our record of pursuing academic excellence that provides tangible industry benefits."

As part of its research outreach, the school is partnered with companies such as Russell Investments, Axa Investment Managers and BNP Paribas Investment Partners, as well as one of Canada's largest pension funds, the CAD$107.5bn (€81bn) Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.

Meanwhile, HamishWilson has called for private sector pension schemes to be subject to a review of similar scale to Lord Hutton's recent report on public sector schemes.

The consultancy said that ways should be explored to introduce risk sharing to the private sector provisions, with a collective defined contribution (DC) model mentioned as one of the ways this could be achieved.

Hamish Wilson, managing director, said DC was of particular interest, as it capped employers costs, but he added that the collective approach could still be employed for maximum gain for all parties involved.

"This is known as collective DC and, unlike Hutton's proposals, does not discriminate between the economically active or inactive in relation to indexation," Wilson said.

"More important, it caps all costs and achieves considerably greater benefits and cost efficiencies compared with the only current realistic alternative for the private sector i.e. 'raw DC'."

He argued that the collective approach, versus the "raw DC", could lead to results as much as 45% higher than currently being achieved, while also reducing overall volatility.

Finally, Mercer has re-launched its scheme discontinuance service due to growing demand for assistance in winding up schemes, as well as arranging buyouts for defined benefit funds.

Neil Bolding, head of scheme discontinuance services, said trustees were usually limited to moving full administration responsibility to specialists when a wind-up was launched, due to the Pensions Regulator setting a two-year time limit.

He argued that the consultancy's approach would instead allow them to retain the acting administrator, while still being able to seek external help if needed.

"Many schemes now have their eye on an exit strategy for their defined benefit schemes, and trustees are coming under increasing pressure to deliver against this, including the data management aspects of any wind-up," he said.

"Modular-based discontinuance services can help trustees plan ahead and work toward the end-game in a more phased approach."
 

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