February 2019

Work in Europe If You Want Your Pension to Grow While Doing Good

The continent has some $12 trillion committed to sustainable investing, more than anywhere else. These days, European asset managers’ websites all seem to have a section devoted to ESG, providing their take on a range of environmental, social, and governance topics including green energy and women on boards. Every mutual fund company has an ESG product, and every investment bank is rolling out ESG research. Europe is the place to be if you want to do good while becoming...

Cyprus to set up a single insurance and pensions supervisory authority

Cyprus will set up a new single independent insurance and pensions fund supervisory authority joining the separate authorities currently supervising the sectors, Finance Minister Harris Georgiades announced on Thursday. The announcement was made during a joint press conference with the President of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions (EIOPA) Authority Gabriel Bernardino, who backed the government’s proposal. “I am really encouraged of the announcement the Minister made today, I strongly supported it,” Bernandino said, adding that the proposal is clearly...

America’s public pension plans make over-optimistic return assumptions

Promising a pension is a long-term and expensive business, especially if the payout is linked to earnings. But whether the employer is private or public, the cost ought to be the same in the long run and so, you might assume, would be the investment approach. Until 2008 that was true for American pension plans: private and public-sector schemes had roughly the same asset allocation. But a new report by Jean-Pierre Aubry and Caroline Crawford of the Centre for...

México. El ‘impulso’ del Sistema de Ahorro para el Retiro coloca líder a Afore Azteca

La Afore Azteca detuvo la fuga de cuentas que sufría hace una década. Ahora es la administradora que más cuentas consigue retener. Al cierre de 2018, la empresa de Grupo Elektra obtuvo 368,657 cuentas en el neto de los traspasos (las cuentas recibidas menos las cedidas), de un total de 2.43 millones de cuentas, de acuerdo con cifras de la Comisión Nacional del Sistema para el Ahorro del Retiro (Consar). Tan sólo dos de las 10 Afores cerraron el...

Perú. Exigen que afiliados paguen comisiones a AFP solo cuando se generen ganancias

El balance del 2018 resultó ser positivo para las Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones (AFP), pero negativo para los afiliados. Millones de soles aparte, el tema central de la discusión gira en torno al sistema de cobro de comisión. Por ello, desde el Congreso surgieron distintas voces que exigen discutir una serie de proyectos de ley que proponen modificar la forma en que los afiliados pagan comisiones a las administradoras de sus aportes. El último fue presentado por el...

México. Urzúa pide ‘no apanicarse’ ante minusvalías de las Afore

El Secretario de Hacienda, Carlos Urzúa Macías, pidió este miércoles a los trabajadores “no apanicarse” ante las minusvalías registradas en sus cuentas de Afore a finales del año pasado, toda vez que indicó que las cuatro administradoras que invirtieron en el Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional de México en Texcoco, mediante la Fibra E, “no van a perder”. Durante la conferencia de prensa matutina del presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador, el responsable de las finanzas públicas del país explicó que las...

IMF warns Italy over plans to lower retirement age

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday criticised Italy's plans to lower the retirement age, saying they would cut the country's growth potential and add to an already high pension bill. In a report following its annual Article IV meetings with Italian authorities, the IMF also criticised aspects of the new income support scheme which is the government's other flagship reform, though it backed the thrust of the measure. IMF directors "underscored the need to protect the poor by means...

US. Retirement Security Bill Re-Introduced In Congress

More U.S. workers would get opportunities to participate in an employer-provided retirement under a bipartisan retirement security bill introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives. The measure contains several provisions which the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) has long-supported and advocated for enactment. Known as the Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act, the bill was initially introduced in previous session. It was re-introduced by Reps. Ron Kind, D-Wisc., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa., as the House Ways and Means Committee conducted...

Institute of Race Relations launches campaign to warn South Africans about the risk to their pensions

A campaign to warn South Africans about the risks to their pensions, and to take a stand in urging the government to concentrate on growing the economy instead has been launched by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR). This follows the announcement that the governing African National Congress (ANC) is considering introducing a regime of prescribed assets. The IRR has warned that expropriation without compensation (EWC) will be about more than just land, and extend to other forms of...

Private equity eyes long-term with Latin American infrastructure buys

Global institutional investors are circling a swathe of energy-related infrastructure assets in Latin America to increase their exposure in a region rife with more uncertainties but offering greater returns than those in more developed markets such as the US. Private investors or pension funds with cash burning holes in their pockets are increasingly participating in leveraged acquisitions of assets from Chile to Mexico. Mainly in the energy and infrastructure fields, such assets come with assigned long-term operating concessions and...