November 2019

18Nov

Australian Pension Giants Join Global Push Into Private Credit

Australian pension funds are stepping up direct lending to companies, following their global peers into the booming market for private credit in a hunt for higher-yielding assets. UniSuper, IFM Investors and First State Super -- all giants in the nation’s A$2.9 trillion ($1.9 trillion) retirements savings pool -- are turning to the loan markets, taking on credit mandates or building out their own investment teams. Banks are “starting to exit some of these sectors, which creates a capital need for other...

November 18, 2019
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15Nov

Operational Risk Modeling in Financial Services: The Exposure, Occurrence, Impact Method

Patrick Naim, Laurent Condamin Operational Risk Modeling in Financial Services provides risk professionals with a forward-looking approach to risk modelling, based on structured management judgement over obsolete statistical methods. Proven over a decade's use in significant banks and financial services firms in Europe and the US, the Exposure, Occurrence, Impact (XOI) method of operational risk modelling played an instrumental role in reshaping their oprisk modelling approaches; in this book, the expert team that developed this methodology offers practical, in-depth...

November 15, 2019
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08Nov

Longevity Risk and Retirement Income Planning

By Patrick J. Collins, Huy D. Lam, Josh Stampfli The past 50 years have seen an abundance of research on retirement planning and longevity risk. Reviewed here is the academic side of the research and its varied viewpoints and nuances. The evolution of retirement risk models, retirement portfolio problems and solutions, and annuities are some of the many topics covered. Get the book here

November 8, 2019
Aging, Books, Investing, Pension design, , ,
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08Nov

US. Pensions Venture Into Risky Corners of the Market in Hunt for Returns

Some pension-fund managers are venturing further into unusual investment territory as this year’s plunge in bond yields makes it harder to find decent long-term returns. Read also US. Coal Mine Workers Pension “Death” Deserves An Autopsy Funds are dabbling in riskier asset classes, including private markets, real-estate projects, infrastructure financing and direct lending. Some are making riskier fixed-income bets, buying volatile assets such as 100-year Argentine government bonds. Others are going farther afield, investing in greenhouses and waste management. Read also...

November 8, 2019
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October 2019

22Oct

IOPS Supervisory Guidelines on the Integration of ESG Factors in the Investment and Risk Management of Pension Funds

Published today, IOPS Supervisory guidelines on the integration of ESG factors in the investment and risk management of pension funds highlight a range of challenges to be met by pension funds governing bodies, asset managers and pension supervisors. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors are key and timely issues for the investment and risk management of pension funds, whose consideration is relatively new in the landscape of regulatory frameworks of pension funds worldwide. They are also dynamically evolving and...

October 22, 2019
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11Oct

Tactical Target Date Funds

By Francisco Gomes, Alexander Michaelides, Yuxin Zhang We propose target date funds modified to exploit stock return predictability driven by the variance risk premium. The portfolio rule of these tactical target date funds (TTDFs) is extremely simplified relative to the optimal one, making it easy to implement and communicate to investors. We show that saving for retirement in TTDFs generates economically large welfare gains, even after we introduce turnover restrictions and transaction costs, and after taking into account parameter...

October 11, 2019
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04Oct

Defined Benefit Pension De-Risking and Corporate Investment Policy

By Brian Silverstein U.S. corporate sponsors of defined benefit pension plans in recent years have been de-risking by paying premiums to transfer their pension plan assets and liabilities to the balance sheets of third party insurers. The passage of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) in 2012 provided the pension funding relief necessary to make de-risking a mainstream corporate activity. This study provides the first empirical analysis of plan and firm factors that cause...

October 4, 2019
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04Oct

Pension Funds Sink Billions Into a Whole New World of Risk

For decades Dutch pension cash flowed to the place most likely to deliver steady and safe returns: government bonds. No longer. Now the investor behind the Netherlands’ biggest pension fund is channeling retirement savings to a Belgian airport, a bicycle parking lot in Utrecht and toll roads in the U.S. and Spain. “Because of low interest rates, we have to cast our nets far and wide to search for returns,” said Thijs Knaap, senior investment strategist at APG Asset...

October 4, 2019
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September 2019

26Sep

UK Expat pensioners advised to protect healthcare rights prior to Brexit

Over 3 years after the referendum the NHS anticipates problems in the 6 months following Brexit With the political scene in London appearing to be entering further turmoil following the Supreme Court’s ruling that Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was unlawful, there have at last been furtherrecommendations this week from Her Majesty’s Government regarding how expats in Spain and the rest of the EU, particularly pensioners, should prepare to protect their healthcare rights in the event of a no-deal...

September 26, 2019
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25Sep

Ghana Pension Funds Are Shielded From Crisis-Hit Ghana. Money Managers

Ghana’s pension funds are safe from the crisis engulfing money managers caught in the aftermath of a banking-industry cleanup. “The only way some may have been affected is if they made fixed-term investments with some of the banks that were shut down,” Hayford Attah Krufi, chief executive officer of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, said in an interview. “But, because the government bailed out depositors, those investments are still safe.” The West African nation’s markets regulator is investigating 21...

September 25, 2019
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