The Pensions Scholarship Trust has made a full grant of €5,000 to Seda Peksevim in support of her work on designing a new life-cycle investing model for pension funds in emerging markets (EM).

Peksevim, a researcher at the Center for Applied Research in Finance (CARF), is currently undertaking a PhD programme under the supervision of Vedat Akgiray, professor of finance at Boğaziçi University.

According to Akgiray, Peksevim has become “one of the most promising researchers on the subject matter in the country”.

Peksevim’s work on the Optimal Design of Mandatory and Auto-Enrolment Pension Systems in Emerging Market Economies’ aims to focus on five key parameters:

- target population;

- financial incentive;

- default fund options;

- fee structure;

- payout phase.

Peksevim said: “Due to the unique characteristics, including the higher price volatility and more uncertainty of EM financial markets, it is important that life-cycle

funds’ portfolio structures are appropriately designed.”

Her project focuses on developing a new life-cycle investing model for EM pension funds by integrating both volatility and uncertainty in these financial markets.

“The main goal of this work is to design a new life-cycle fund that can be offered as a default option in EM pension funds and contribute to the understanding of long-term

optimal portfolio allocation in EM financial markets,” she said.

The Pensions Scholarship Trust was set up in 2019 with the purpose of furthering education and research across Europe into the area of pension and retirement income

provision. It is the successor to the former IPE Pensions Scholarship Fund.

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