October 2024
14Oct

US. What Does Inflation’s New Normal Mean for Public Pension Funds?

September’s Federal Reserve interest rate cut was meant to signal a win in the battle against inflation. With the highest inflationary peak in decades behind us, there was palpable relief at the idea of rates coming down. That may be especially true for public pension plan participants and plan sponsors. Over the past few years, more retiree groups have pushed for cost-of-living adjustments for their retirement benefits, as inflation eroded pension benefits. Some have been successful at getting ad hoc...

October 14, 2024
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03Oct

UK. FCA: ‘We’ve raised the bar, we never expected all funds to get SDR label’

There is a “healthy pipeline” of funds applying for SDR investment labels, in line with where the regulator expected the market to be at this stage, the Financial Conduct Authority has said. Alicia Kedzierski, head of sustainable finance at the FCA, told delegates at the UKSIF Good Money Week conference 10 labels had been awarded as of yesterday (October 2) and many more were in the pipeline. Though she could not say how many labels the regulator expects to authorise before...

October 3, 2024
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01Oct

UK. Industry must work to improve communication on sustainable pensions

There is an “enormous amount of work” to do to improve communication with savers about sustainable pensions, Harmonics founder and CEO, John Dithfield, has argued. Speaking at a Good Money Week event yesterday (September 30), Dithfield discussed the complexities of sustainable pensions and how difficult it can be for savers to fully understand them. “What should savers look for in a pension? I think it is very difficult really,” he said. “The real problem for people is the complexity of understanding what’s...

October 1, 2024
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September 2024
27Sep

Pension scheme assets – how they are invested and how and why they change over time

By The Pensions Policy Intitute We know both ‘quite a lot’ and ‘not enough’ about the assets that back current and future retirement incomes. Quite a lot because there are several sources of data that map pension fund assets and the way in which they are invested. Not enough because there are gaps in our knowledge and a multiplicity of data sets that classify assets in slightly different ways. The timing of different reports can also create difficulty mapping assets...

September 27, 2024
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26Sep

UK. Industry weighs in on government’s pension investment review

Industry experts have stressed the need to put member security at the forefront of any changes to the pension market, cautioning the government against potential mandating or legislating for particular investment allocations. The government recently launched a call for evidence to help inform the first phase of its pension investment review, which will aim to boost investment, increase pension pots and tackle waste in the pensions system. In its response to the consutlation, the Society of Pension Professionals (SPP) agreed that scale can deliver...

September 26, 2024
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25Sep

Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance unveils milestone emissions cuts

Institutional investors holding a combined $9.5 trillion of assets say they’ve slashed portfolio emissions at a rate that aligns them with the goal of limiting global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5C. The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, whose signatories include Allianz and the $519.9 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Sacramento, said in a statement on Sept. 25 that reduction in greenhouse gas emissions registered by its 88 members was at least 6% on average, annually, since 2018. At...

September 25, 2024
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23Sep

UK pension fund Nest agrees tie-up to invest up to £1bn in build-to-rent

The UK’s state-backed pension scheme has agreed a tie-up with insurer Legal & General and Dutch pension fund manager PGGM to invest up to £1bn in build-to-rent properties, in a deal hailed by the UK government as an example of how the country’s retirement savings can be directed towards its homebuilding effort. The groups are today announcing a partnership with an initial £350mn commitment of combined investment, expected to grow to £1bn in the coming years, to build and manage...

September 23, 2024
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20Sep

The Rise of Alternatives

By Juliane Begenau, Pauline Liang & Emil Siriwardane Since the 2000s, U.S. public pensions have shifted their risky investments towards alternative assets like private equity and hedge funds, some more aggressively than others. We explore several explanations for these cross-sectional trends, focusing on those implied by the mean-variance models used by most pensions. Our evidence suggests that the rise of alternatives has been fueled by an increase in their perceived risk-adjusted returns relative to public equities. Pension beliefs are shaped...

September 20, 2024
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19Sep

US. New York City Pensions’ CIO Steven Meier discusses trustees’ attitudes to ESG

For Steven Meier, chief investment officer of the New York City public pension funds, finding alignment – particularly regarding ESG – among the trustees of the five pension plans he manages, is one of the key challenges he faces. The trustees of the five New York City public pension plans diverge in their attitudes to ESG, and one of the key challenges Meier faces is “finding consistency of thought” among these trustees, Meier said this week. Meier’s office manages the New...

September 19, 2024
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18Sep

Nigerian pension assets soar 4.17% to N20.48tn in Q2’2024

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has maintained an upward growth trajectory as the contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) recorded a total asset of N20.48 trillion in the second quarter of 2024, marking a 4.17 per cent  increase from N19.66 trillion it recorded in Q1 2024. According to PenCom, the number of pension contributions increased from 89,061 in the first quarter of 2024  to 100,063 in Q2 2024. It noted that remittance of pension contributions increased by 20.26 per cent from N314.17...

September 18, 2024
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