November 2023

AI and Retirement – How It Will Affect Your Retirement Savings

By Carolyn Young  Artificial Intelligence (AI) is impacting humans more than any of us realize. It’s being used by marketers to gain customer insights, by manufacturers to automate processes, and by many businesses to analyze data and improve efficiency. AI’s ability to rapidly analyze large amounts of data has also given it a huge role in the financial industry, and thus can impact your retirement savings in a variety of ways. In fact, AI is being used most by the banking...

US Pension Risk Transfer Market Expected to See $10 Billion In Q3 Deal Volume

Legal & General Retirement America (LGRA), a leading provider of pension risk solutions in the United States, today released the Q3 2023 edition of the US Pension Risk Transfer Monitor, which analyzes industry trends and market outlooks in the US. Following the largest first half on record for the US Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) market at $22.5 billion in deal volume, the Monitor reports an expected $10 billion in Q3 PRT market volume. While this is a decrease from last...

Knowledge Of ESG, Integration and Greenwashing Remains Low

Determining how best to incorporate environmental, social and governance factors across the investment portfolio continues to be a challenge for institutional investors, said Bonnie Treichel, founder and chief solutions officer at Endeavor Retirement, during the “Surveying the Landscape” session of CIO’s ESG livestream this month. Not Just a Label “How do people really understand this?” Treichel asked. “It’s really hard, because a lot of times, I’ll ask the question about ESG and an investment lineup, and the perspective that I hear...

Kenya. Pension returns negative on falling share prices

Kenyan pension schemes have registered negative returns in the quarter ended September on wider losses from equities, a new survey shows. According to the Performance Investment Management Survey by South Africa-based investment firm RisCura, the weighted average return of surveyed schemes was posted at negative 3.06 percent in the quarter from a return of 0.18 percent in the previous quarter. The weighted average return from equities deteriorated to a loss of 10.95 percent from losses of 4.27 percent in the quarter...

Annual Survey of Investment Regulation of Pension Funds and Other Pension Providers 2021

By Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos This report describes the main quantitative investment regulations that pension funds are subject to in OECD and a selection of non-OECD countries, most of which are IOPS Member countries. This report also covers the investment rules for other pension providers, such as life insurance companies, for countries like Denmark, France, Ireland, Korea, Latvia and Sweden among OECD countries and Jordan among non-OECD jurisdictions. The information reflects the rules in force at the end of 2020...

The world’s largest pension funds – 2023

By Thinking Ahead Institute  The global top 300 pension funds is an annual study conducted by the Thinking Ahead Institute, in conjunction with Pensions and Investments. The research highlights high-level trends in the pension fund industry and provides information on how the characteristics of these top funds have changed. Key findings Assets Under Management (AUM) of the top 300 pension funds total US$20.6 trillion, having reduced by 12.9% in 2022, down from 8.9% growth the previous year Volatility and uncertainty in...

Dutch pension funds fear ‘ill-fated idea’ to grandfather accruals

Agnes Joseph, an actuary for Achmea and a member of parliament (MP) candidate for the NSC party, is leading the proposal to make it easier to keep accruals in the current DB system – a plan that was unveiled last month when NSC published its election manifesto and discussed extensively on Monday during an election debate organised by IPE’s sister publication Pensioen Pro. According to Joseph, who is the NSC spokesperson for pensions, DB pensions should only be converted to DC if pension...

China pension fund posts 0.33% gain in 2022

The basic pension fund managed by China’s social security fund gained RMB 5.1 billion, or 0.33% in 2022, down from a 4.9% gain in 2021, the National Council for Social Security Fund said on Saturday, reports Reuters. The shrink in yield was mainly impacted by deep changes in global economic and political situations and increasing fluctuations in the financial markets, the state investor said in a statement. China’s stock benchmark CSI 300 lost 21.6% in 2022 and so far this year...

Canada. ‘Take your job seriously’: Employment Minister tells Alberta to stick with Canada Pension Plan

Federal Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault says he is against any attempt by the Alberta government to leave the Canada Pension Plan. "I can tell you that the federal government and I are very clearly committed to working with Albertans to keep them in the Canada Pension Plan," Boissonnault told CTV’s Power Play on Friday. "It's simply wrong to politicize pensions." Alberta's governing United Conservative Party contends that the province's workers put more into the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) than they get...

2022 Future Focus Survey: ESG and sustainable investing trends in Europe

By J.P. Morgan Asset Management   While allocations to sustainable investing strategies continue to grow, the average allocation across Europe is relatively low, at 23%. Even in Finland, which tops the table, the average allocation is only 33%. It is clear that even in the region where sustainable investing is most popular, broad ESG adoption is still at the early part of its journey.* Interestingly, there is far more divergence among the investors within countries than between them. Therefore, we urge investors to focus on the...