Asset Allocation – Page 156
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Features
Gearing up for changes
In an unguarded moment during a visit to New Zealand last year prime minister Göran Persson told a local interviewer that if the younger generation in Sweden really understood what the country’s new pension system meant in terms of a final pension they would not have accepted it. Although a ...
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Features
Broadening the perspective
Quelle année? Ah yes, 2004. A particularly good year. Now, more than a year on from the requests for proposal issued by the Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR) the impact on the market is clear. A gradual maturing of attitudes and approach received a massive boost from the ...
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Features
Making the breakthrough
In 2000 the Taxation of Pension Investment Returns Act was introduced in Denmark. Like a good new year’s resolution it promised a simpler taxation regime for all, and a gateway for foreign asset managers wishing to break into the domestic Danish market. Five years of freedom have seen major growth ...
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Features
How to benchmark pension fund costs
It is, suggests Richard Stroud, chief executive of the UK’s Pension Trust, a question of being able to compare like for like. Take grocery shopping. UK Supermarket retailers Tesco and Asda compare their prices in order to attract customers. Why shouldn’t investment managers and third party administrators do the same, ...
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Features
Going in alternatives direction
IPE asked three pension funds – in the UK, Belgium and Finland – the same question: ‘Do alternative asset classes serve a useful purpose or are they too complex and too expensive?’ Here are their answers: Richard Stroud, chief executive at The Pensions Trust, which has AUM of £3.3bn ...
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Features
Actuaries take on piloting role
For French companies, the financial year 2005 is the first year of compulsory use of the new international accounting rule IAS 19. In the meantime, the European directive on Institutions for Retirement Provision leads to more actuarial services, pension actuaries are concerned in some specifically French benefits such as as ...
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Features
EU action may boost funds
With the exception of Italy, Denmark and Sweden, all EU member states apply either the EET or the TEE system to pension taxation. EET means that the pension contributions are ‘exempt’, that is the contributions are deductible from the taxable income, the investment results of the fund itself are also ...
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Features
Revolution for self-employed
In common with many European countries, Belgium’s public pension schemes are PAYG; also in common with other European countries, future demographic projections show clearly that these schemes will come under huge financial pressures. A recent report of the OECD hghlighted the effects of longevity as the major challenge for Belgium’s ...
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Features
In praise of risk
“I love risk. I like it because it produces returns for me”, said ABP chief investment officer Roderick Munsters at the 5th annual Institutional Fund Management conference in Geneva. Munsters was one of several industry heavyweights expressing views on the current and potential future challenges facing the pension fund, investment ...
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Features
Making virtue of necessity
After the Second World War, Belgium developed a broad social security system that differentiated between different kinds of profession. Different schemes were set up for employees, the self-employed and civil servants. The decree of 28 December 1944 provided the populace with legally regulated and guaranteed protection, funded by contributions from ...
