All articles by IPE staff – Page 33
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Features
Fund aims for 5% real estate share with overseas focus
To bring diversification into ATP’s overall investment portfolio, approximately 4.3% has been invested in property – equivalent to €1.4bn. The strategic goal is to reach a 5% allocation (+/– 3 percentage points) in property by the end of 2003. Until the beginning of 2002, ATP invested solely in Danish real ...
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Features
Bringing consistency to schemes in 19 countries
As a growing multinational with a young workforce, Vodafone faces atypical challenges when compared to more traditional companies. The pension benefits provided to its employees must be relevant to their expectations and must fit within a total reward package, which also has an emphasis on Vodafone shares. The Vodafone group ...
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Features
Doesn’t suit you, Sir
The other day Belle and I went into a car showroom. When we finally got to see a salesman, he said: “You’ll want a Volvo estate.” “Certainly not, we want a Lotus Elise,” I said. “Sorry, couldn’t sell you that. A beast like you would look silly, the Volvo it ...
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Features
Making a smooth transition to a new pension market
The Riester reforms continue to dominate the German pensions landscape and the Heidelberg-based German occupational pension fund association, Arbeitsgemeinschaft fuer Betriebliche Altersversorgung (ABA), says its main role now is to ensure a continued smooth transition to the new market, good communication and education of pension fund members and to get ...
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Features
For a small fee...
Convention has it that the long-term benchmark is the ‘strategy’, and the shorter-term deviations are the ‘tactics’. More important than the label is by whom and how these long-term decisions are made. There was a time when the trustee decision was to follow the herd, and the herd moved at ...
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Features
Employers get greater flexibility in making fund transfers
It has been a good year for Finland’s Association of Pension Foundations. In July legislation came into effect allowing employers to transfer schemes from pension companies to funds and foundations. Finland has a generous earnings-related first pillar system, partly funded but mostly PAYG. There is no ceiling on earnings and ...
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Features
Effecting domestic pension reforms takes centre stage
As with pension fund associations elsewhere across Europe, the Association Française des Regimes et Fonds de Pension (Afpen) has found itself devoting a large amount of its time to domestic pensions reform, and, to a lesser extent, the European pensions directive for occupational schemes. “These reforms are the widest-ranging set ...
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Features
Funds struggle to meet their capital requirements
Danish funds suffered more than many from the market meltdown. Much of Denmark’s pension money is based on a 4.5% minimum benefit guarantee, which was the rate for 12 years until 1994. The falls in share prices and interest rates, combined with the high guarantee, have made it difficult for ...
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Features
Focus has been on second pillar pensions
The Brussels-based Belgian Pension Fund Association (BPFA) has found itself involved in two main areas in the past year or so: the implementation of the new law on second-pillar pensions and the investments results of Belgian funds during 2002. In addition, the BPFA has undergone some internal restructuring as a ...
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Features
Revised legislation aims to strengthen fund assets
In Austria, pensions have hit the headlines over the past year. The run-up to June’s passing of the pensions reform bill by the Austrian parliament was marked by national strikes and demonstrations as points of the bill were hotly opposed. In the end, concessions had to be made on key ...
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Features
Still stressed
The Danish pension fund market has been dominated in the past few years by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority’s (DFSA) introduction of colour-coded stress tests to assess the financial strength of life insurers and pensions institutions. The DFSA’s so-called ‘traffic light’ system works on two scenarios: a ‘red light’ under ...
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Features
Opportunity or trap?
Fears in the Netherlands that some of the early drafts of the pan-European Pensions Directive – particularly where it mentioned quantitative investment restrictions – could have impacted seriously on Europe’s second largest pension market were allayed by the final adopted version. This took great pains not to restrict any of ...
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Features
Waiting game
For three years in a row, Belgian pension funds have started the year with news of disappointing investment returns and discussions regarding the future of the country’s pension industry. Added to this the debate regarding the introduction of the European Pensions Directive hasn’t gone unnoticed, although all agree that the ...
