February 2023

Willis Towers Watson dives into U.S. market for pooled employer plans

After launching pooled employer plans in the U.K. and Europe, Willis Towers Watson is hitting the U.S. market with its own PEP offering. In a news release Thursday, the British-American multinational company announced that it had launched LifeSight PEP, a pooled employer plan for the U.S. market that it says "simplifies 401(k) plan sponsorship for employers and improves outcomes for their employees." The pooled employer plan will use Transamerica as its record keeper. The company will pursue employers with anywhere from a...

Kenya. Administrator welcomes NSSF contribution rise, urges simple opt-out process

Pension administrator Enwealth has welcomed the move to increase retirement savings contributions through the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Act 2013. Early this February, the Court of Appeal quashed a judgment by an Employment and Labour Relations Court that declared the NSSF Act 2013 unconstitutional. While the Act recommended a monthly deduction of Sh200 to Sh600 for lower earners, top earners will be deducted Sh320 to Sh1,080 on a graduated scale. Increased contributions seek to ensure financial security for the retirees. However, the...

EIOPA, Unit-linked Insurance and Polish Product Intervention: A Silent Regulatory Revolution?

By Lucie Škapová When the Polish financial market supervisor, Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego (KNF), notified its intention to prohibit certain unit-linked insurance products marketed in Poland, it created an unprecedented situation: for the first time, a financial market supervisor decided to trigger Chapter III of the PRIIPs Regulation and adopt product intervention measures in the insurance sector. If adopted, these measures would regulate not only the investment strategies of unit-linked insurance products offered in Poland but also their cost structure and...

Putting Labor’s Capital to Work for Labor: Restoring a Worker-Centric Vision of Fiduciary Duty

By David H. Webber  This report has two goals: first, to illustrate how the legal concept of fiduciary duty, designed to protect worker retirement funds, has been captured and distorted in ways that harm workers. Second, to propose means of restoring fiduciary duty to its proper purpose. The state-level fiduciary duties addressed in this report govern the investment of up to $10 trillion in assets and directly shape the retirements of 26 million working-class Americans. They are also just about...

Global institutional retirement assets decline 16.7% in 2022 – Thinking Ahead Institute

Global institutional retirement assets saw a drop of 16.7% in 2022 compared to 2021, dipping to $47.9 trillion — a decline not seen since the 2008 global financial crisis, according to a study by the Thinking Ahead Institute in London. Marisa Hall, institute head, said that retirement assets are very linked to capital markets. "When you see corrections in equities and bonds as we have seen over the last year, it will have a knock-on effect on pension funds," she said. Read...

Denmark’s AkademikerPension takes on the banks financing fossil fuels

Denmark’s AkademikerPension, the member-owned pension fund for 150,000 academics, has just notched up another important milestone in its ambitious sustainability strategy. Pressure from the fund’s CIO and chief financial officer Anders Schelde on Denmark’s Dankse Bank contributed to the lender announcing plans to end new financing to oil and gas E&P companies that don’t have a credible transition plan in line with the Paris Agreement. Last year, Schelde stood up and challenged Dankse executives at the bank’s AGM, the only...

US. Pension funds are sticking with bonds for the most part

Last year was rough for U.S. pension fund bond portfolios. With the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond index down 14.6% after a year of high volatility, investors had to look to other parts of their portfolios to bolster returns. For the defined benefit plans among the 200 largest plan sponsors in Pensions & Investments' survey, the evidence of that volatility is obvious in the data. A significant portion of the plans in the survey reported smaller bond portfolios as of Sept....

US. Attention to ESG grew in 2022 along with headwinds

It is tricky to say which was a more volatile issue in 2022 for public pension funds operating under ESG principles — the politics or the markets. They managed to navigate both, and this year many of them are even ratcheting up their sustainable investing agendas. Some, like the $61.4 billion Maryland State Retirement and Pension System, Baltimore, took a page from the largest U.S. funds that added ESG specialists for their investment divisions. Although Maryland CIO Andrew Palmer first formed...

Pension fund investors back climate risk lawsuit against Shell

Pension funds in the U.K. and Europe are backing a novel lawsuit against Shell PLC alleging that its directors breached their legal duties by failing to manage climate risk or plan for the energy transition. The lawsuit filed in the High Court of England and Wales Thursday by non-profit organization ClientEarth, a minor Shell shareholder, has the backing of institutional investors with a collective £450 billion ($550 billion) in assets and more than 12 million shares in the energy company. The...

Eight funds breached EU sustainability rules, says Danish watchdog

Denmark's financial watchdog has ordered the companies behind eight sustainability funds to take remedial action after finding they had violated European Union disclosure rules on such investments. The watchdog said failings included a lack of clear, adequate and comprehensive information on the funds' sustainable investment objectives. Financial regulators across Europe have increased scrutiny of how fund managers are meeting reporting requirements of the EU's Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), which aims to prevent so-called greenwashing of environmental or sustainability credentials. "It is...