Asia-Pacific: Pensions and Investment News and Analysis – Page 27
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Special Report
Corporatising Asia
It’s no news that Asia offers long-term growth. But the value locked up in its disparate corporate structures means private equity could represent the keenest form of Asian risk, writes Joseph Mariathasan
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IP Asia
Where next for the NPS?
The New Pension Scheme framework is a tremendous concept, but turning the concept into a successful solution to the problems of old age poverty in India is a task that requires a level of commitment, organisation and resources that are still yet to be deployed. The experience of the past ...
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IP Asia
Setting up of the New Pension Scheme
Given the drawbacks of the traditional provisions for pensions, India faced pressures for reform, which led a decade ago to two separate developments. The first of these was the OASIS report initiated by the Ministry of Social Justice in July 1998, written by a Committee chaired by Surendra A. Dave, ...
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IP Asia
The IIMPS “Micro-Pension” model
Adopting the NPS for the mass of unregulated workers in the informal sector requires the ability to set up systems that enable small amounts of cash to be remitted at irregular intervals over long periods of time. Much of the NPS framework has been set in place to provide this ...
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IP Asia
Don’t try to be too smart
That is the advice of French research institute EDHEC, as it increases its activity in the Asian region. Lionel Martellini, professor of finance and scientific director of the EDHEC Risk Institute, explains the group’s attempts to develop an alternative to traditional index benchmarking.
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IP Asia
A global view of the financial crisis
Pension fund heads from around the world comment on the lessons they have learnt from the GFC.
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IP Asia
Lesson of the crisis for the Social Security Fund
Dai Xianglong, chairman of China’s National Council for Social Security Fund (NSSF) was a keynote speaker at the Pacific Pension Institute’s 2009 Asian Pension Fund Roundtable in Bangkok. Chairman Dai says the assets of the NSSF are expected to exceed 1 trillion RMB (approx. $150bn) within two years. He believes ...
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IP Asia
Strategies and incentives for expanding voluntary pension coverage
Recommendation of the OASIS report The financial needs of an individual across their lifetimes are inevitably complex, whatever their wealth. Poor people lead lives with unpredictable cashflows, requiring risk management and the solution of complex financial problems. “As a result, consumers need sophisticated financial products”, says Ajay Shah, a Senior ...
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IP Asia
Civil service pension reform
A major element of India’s future pension strategy is the adoption by central and state governments of the NPS framework as the basis for future public sector pensions. The Indian central government introduced the New Pension System (NPS) with effect from January 1, 2004. Under the new pension system, the ...
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IP Asia
China heading for disaster on the RMB
Beijing’s determination to avoid a dramatic RMB appreciation reinforces a monetary and FX dis-equilibrium that perpetuates large and unsustainable external imbalances that are without precedent.
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IP Asia
Building India’s pension future - introduction
In this special report, IPA’s India correspondent Joseph Mariathasan explains the issues and talks to those involved in mapping out India’s pension future.
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IP Asia
Is this China’s bubble period?
PIMCO Japan’s Koyo Ozeki has produced an interesting study of China’s real estate boom in comparison with the major asset bubble that brought Japan to its knees in the late 1980s.
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IP Asia
New opportunities in emerging corporate bonds
Emerging market corporate bonds staged an impressive performance in 2009. T. Rowe Price has just produced a paper outlining the opportunity for institutions to diversify their bond alpha. As an asset class, emerging market corporate bonds are taking a more prominent role in fixed income portfolios, particularly as emerging market ...
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IP Asia
Beyond Domestic Bias
For many years pension funds across Asia were content to focus mainly on domestic markets - with high allocations to domestic bonds and equity. This home bias proved costly for many asset owners who missed out on a global uptick in equities, especially in emerging markets. Many Japanese pension funds, ...
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IP Asia
The plumbing for the NPS – the Unique ID Authority
One of the most difficult aspects of establishing a pension scheme for hundreds of millions of the poorest segments of India’s society, is identifying who they are absolutely accurately over a period of a lifetime. Many of the potential participants in the NPS are illiterate, and there may even be ...
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IP Asia
Asia’s pensions among the best and the worst
Australia and Hong Kong rank highest because the overall structures of their old age provisioning systems are quite balanced, despite setbacks to their funded systems as a result of the financial crisis.
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IP Asia
New indices help investors adopt passive ESG policy
As SRI indices proliferate, there is an increasing need for comparative data on the indices themselves.
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IP Asia
Access ETFs likely to feature in 2010
Activity in the exchange traded funds market looks set increase even further this year, as the major promoters boost their product range in Asia. Although the market is still developing, with the level of marketing activity, ETFs have quickly become an integral part of the Asia-Pacific region’s financial landscape. The ...
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IP Asia
Mitigating Risk in Transition Management
Thorny markets and complex portfolios demand sensitive handling of liquidity, market, operational and executional risks during global transitions.
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IP Asia
A much-changed landscape for QDII
The initial success of the QDII program exceeded the most optimistic expectations, with several funds raising more than 200% of their available quotas forcing regulators to increase allocations in an effort to satisfy domestic investor demand. Eighteen months later we find ourselves in a very different economic environment. Fund ...