All articles by IPE staff – Page 23
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Features
Young scheme sets out to engage with membership
Communication for pension funds is never easy, especially when it comes to making them easy to understand and interesting for members who often have a preconceived idea that the subject is boring and complex. This was the challenge facing the winner of IPE’s Country Award 2005 for Switzerland, the Media ...
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Features
How efficiency leads to management excellence
Inarcassa firmly believes that strong governance and efficient investment processes are essential to excel in the management of pension fund assets. The scheme relies on effective decision-making, regular performance measurement for the fund, money managers and consultants, as well as transparency and communication to its members and the different governing ...
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Features
Dynamic strategy seeks out the risks that are worth it
Dutch pension fund PGGM has won the best industry-wide pension fund award for its creation of an innovative portfolio of strategies used in absolute return investing. Over the years, PGGM’s own asset- liability modelling (ALM) studies have led the fund to allocate its assets increasingly to alternative investments. However, during ...
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Features
Digging deeper in the members' interests
The key to Denmark’s €41.3bn pension fund winning IPE’s Silver Award for Best European Public Pension Fund in 2005 is undoubtedly its ability to dig deeper to achieve the best possible solutions for its members. This is evident in its four-pronged approach to mastering pension fund management. Firstly, it considers ...
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Features
Quantitative route to effective decision-making
The BPI Valorizacão Pension Fund’s investment strategy has been heavily influenced by the new company chief investment officer’s hedge fund background. He wanted to implement a model that would allow the pension scheme to have more consistent numbers and minimise negative performance periods. He concluded that traditional emotion-driven quantitative decisions ...
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Features
Date with destiny
It’s the time of reckoning once again for the pensions community as the IPE European Pensions Awards winners are announced. And as we always make a point of noting, it is also a time to celebrate the achievements not just of our winners, but of those involved in pensions the ...
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Features
Web-based data service gives members the full picture
In 2004 and 2005, PKA members’ services were developed further by the introduction of a number of extra facilities on the website. The strategy for this development has been based on providing the right information at the relevant times, through the channel preferred by the individual member. Almost 20,000 members ...
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Features
Continuing reform focuses on governance and inclusion
The UK pensions industry needs Barclays. It is a market that is full of doom and gloom. It is only fitting then that Barclays should win the IPE European Country Silver Award 2005. For this is a sterling example of how to move forward. The dynamism, enthusiasm and sheer determination ...
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Features
Comfort from derivatives
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland – the same question: ‘Do derivatives perform a useful function in pension fund portfolios or are too costly, complicated and risky?’ Here are their answers: Hasser Jørgensen, chief investment officer at Denmark’s PFA Pension which ...
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Features
Streamlined collection system leads where others wait
A reform of the way in which tax and insurance is deducted from employees’ salaries in the Netherlands has prompted the Dutch pension fund Pensioenfonds Horeca & Catering (PH&C) to introduce procedural and technological changes for calculating and collecting employer contributions. This project has earned the fund this year’s themed ...
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Features
Portfolio managed to meet global challenges
An important component in creating long-term competitive returns for life insurance savers is to set up an efficient portfolio construction process. In particular, effective portfolio management can best equip a fund to meet global challenges such as the EU occupational pensions directive and the new traffic light model being used ...
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Features
Embracing the challenge of a changing pensions system
It will come as no real surprise to see Barclays walk away again with IPE’s Country Award for the United Kingdom. Last year, it won for its innovative ‘afterwork’ concept, a hybrid defined benefit and defined contribution scheme. This year, its success is thanks to its excellent stakeholder engagement policy. ...
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Features
Structured CDOs: keeping track of the overlap?
The growth of structured credit markets in Europe and across the world seems pretty much unstoppable. According to the British Banking Association, at the end of 2003 the global market for credit derivatives (excluding asset swaps) accounted for $3.5 trn (e2.9trn) and could reach $8.2 trn by 2006. Collateralised debt ...
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Features
Confidence and diversity builds portfolio that protects
Given its innovative and efficient approach to building its portfolios, it’s no wonder Inarcassa continues to be one of Italy’s leading pension funds and has won the IPE Award 2005 for portfolio construction. The objective behind the €3bn self-employed engineers’ and architects’ fund is generating maximum returns with minimum risk, ...
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Features
Limits set by risk budget help to boost funding rating
Over the past year, Danish pension fund ATP has amended its approach to liability-driven investments, splitting the investment portfolio into separate alpha, beta, and liability hedge portfolios. This approach has won it the themed award for risk management. Risk management has been a cornerstone in the fund’s investment management for ...
