All From Our Perspective articles – Page 4
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FeaturesRegulatory monoculture and systemic risk
What is the connection between tropical fruit and systemic risk? In 1990, when East German citizens demonstrated for freedom and democracy, the banana became a potent symbol of the basic level of prosperity to which they aspired
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FeaturesFrom Our Perspective: How transparent?
Gerard van Olphen, CEO of APG, contends that the Dutch pension sector is in denial about the need for transparency. The same accusation could be levelled against pension funds in other places.
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Features
From Our Perspective: Brexit adds to the pressure
Future observers might point to the 23 June EU referendum as a turning point for UK occupational pensions. The fall in Gilt yields has added pain to trustees and sponsors, vindicating those who had hedging strategies in place
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From Our Perspective: Matters of culture
In Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon, not only are all the women strong and all the men good looking, but all the children are above average
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Features
From Our Perspective: Under the thumb
Some occupational pensions and their regulatory systems were designed for another era. Increasingly, fixed-rate annual accrual or guarantee systems, like German and Swiss Pensionskassen, look like relics.
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Features
From Our Perspective: France rallies to the cause
Opposition to funded pensions has long been popular in France. Trade unions suspect that they will act as a Trojan horse for Anglo-Saxon capitalism and social welfare policy, which would undermine the country’s solidarity-based pension system. Politicians shy away from using terms like ‘pension funds’.
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FeaturesBanks and LDI
The rise of liability-driven investments (LDI), pairing cashflow-matching assets with forecast liability streams, has developed in tandem with a broad, overall maturing of the liabilities of the European occupational pension sector
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Features
From Our Perspective: Pensions-by-wire
It is well known that commercial pilots don’t actually need to fly their planes thanks to fly-by-wire software. Even so, the presence of skilled pilots throughout any flight is essential. No-one would step onto a plane otherwise.
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Features
From Our Perspective: COP21 - what next?
The momentum and excitement in Paris last month at the COP21 UN Conference on Climate Change marks a turning point in the perception of climate change as an economic risk, reinforcing a growing mainstream consensus that institutional investors need to do two things.
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FeaturesFrom our perspective: Off to the right start?
What could the UK learn from other countries as it seeks to consolidate the LGPS? There are clear arguments in favour of consolidation, and one recent proposal involves asset pools
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FeaturesFrom our perspective: Numerical expectations
What’s in a number? Quite a lot can rest on the choice of a single figure when it represents a pension fund’s long-term return assumptions. Much rides on these assumptions, which affect current and future contribution rates. There is a great deal to lose if the balance between current and future generations gets out of kilter.
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Features
From our perspective: Back to the future?
IPE’s 18-year history has been one of the expansion of funded pension systems. While countries like France have held out in favour of répartition, others have expanded the development of funded pension systems
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From Our Perspective: Who’s watching the watchers?
In some countries they are accused of heavy-handedness; in others they seem content to play a light-touch role. Either way, European pension regulation remains as diverse as the continent’s pension systems. The IORP II Directive, like its 2004 counterpart will be interpreted and implemented differently across the EU member states; harmonisation of regulation has not led to a harmonisation of regulators.
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Features
Bigger is not always better when it comes to pension funds
A recent working paper of the Dutch central bank on costs sheds light on a debate playing out in several European capitals over the size of retirement institutions
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From Our Perspective: Unity in opposition
They may not be wielding pitchforks but Europe’s pension fund community is of one mind: the stress test proposal of EIOPA is something they, their sponsors, their regulators and, above all, their members, do not need
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FeaturesFlying the long-term flag
Rather like attitudes to motherhood and apple pie, there is no serious or fundamental opposition from institutional investors to the principle of long-term strategies like infrastructure or real economy lending
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Features
From our perspective: A meeting of minds?
Germany is the undisputed political and economic leader of Europe and the euro-zone but it has been notably less proactive on pensions
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From our perspective: Pensions and the black box
When the UK, Dutch and Swedish pensions ministers met in January, an odds-on bet is that they discussed their respective pension reforms. The proposed overhaul in the Netherlands involves the likely move away from the intergenerational ‘black box’ of an overly complex pension system. Conversely, the UK is trying to bring back a more palatable form of risk sharing with its plans for collective defined contribution (CDC) schemes, which are to be introduced in legislation currently before Parliament.
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From our perspective: What do you need to shout about?
A recent trend in European occupational pensions has been towards increased transparency on costs – for instance, in the Netherlands and Switzerland. So for numerous European pension funds, measuring and presenting asset management cost data has become standard, even if the task seemed daunting for some at the outset. In Switzerland, managers unable to provide a total expense ratio are named in a separate ‘blacklist’ on the annual report
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Looking ahead: questions for 2015
Micro-prudential or macro-prudential? What do you mean by long term? Is less sometimes more? Is less sometimes more?
