May 2026

Q&A with a portfolio manager – the evolution of impact investing

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF)1 – the world’s biggest pension fund – has made impact investing a key focus, while several major pension funds in France2 publicly announced similar intentions in 2025. Five years ago, impact investing might have been confined to more of a niche within our client base. Today, many clients across different segments are actively looking to allocate capital to such strategies, to generate financial returns, while also addressing pressing societal challenges. As climate change, geopolitical instability and...

U.S. investors demand executive pension changes

Proposals by U.S. investor activists to rein in executive pensions will be put to a key test this week when the initiatives go to votes at companies including AT&T Inc. and Johnson & Johnson . Shareholders who want a greater say in setting CEO pay complain that senior executives have accumulated unreasonably large amounts of money in company-funded pension plans. They want to limit what can be considered a senior executive's income when tallying how much the company should contribute to the pension,...

January 2026

Danish pension fund to sell $100 million in U.S. Treasuries due to “poor U.S. government finances”

A Danish pension fund is planning to sell its entire holdings of U.S. Treasuries — about $100 million — over concerns about the U.S. government's financial stability. AkademikerPension confirmed to CBS News that it is exiting U.S. Treasuries by the end of this month and that it will instead turn to the U.S. dollar and short-duration debt. "The decision is rooted in the poor U.S. government finances, which make us think that we need to make an effort to find an...

November 2025

The Offshoring of America’s Retirement Savings

Private equity firms and other alternative asset managers — including Ares Management Corp., Blackstone Inc., Brookfield Corp. and KKR & Co. — are reshaping the once-staid world of life insurance. Over the past decade, they’ve bought, built or partnered with insurers that sell policies and annuities, collectively commanding hundreds of billions of dollars. In a previous era, life insurers parked their money in the safest corners of the market — mostly high-grade bonds and big-name stocks. But as Wall Street...

August 2025

Optimization Algorithms for Pension Asset Allocation Under Market Volatility

By Akshay Sharma & Satish Kabade Pension fund organizations function as essential financial entities that protect employee retirement funds to provide complete and punctual pension distributions. Pension fund effectiveness through asset distribution determines how well a fund meets its future obligations. Traditional methods of portfolio optimization align with the Modern Portfolio Theory through the Markowitz model to help determine asset allocation by defining the relationship between return and risk. These static modeling approaches fail to fulfill their purpose in real...

January 2025

European investors upbeat on impact investing, despite US concerns

Over 90% of European investors polled in the run up to the 21 January of US president Donald Trump said they were extremely or somewhat concerned over the state of ESG and sustainability practices in the US, but they still intend to either maintain or increase their impact allocations, a survey by Pensions for Purpose shows. Pensions for Purpose, a UK-based industry body, says the results are significant because, although European and US investors often follow distinct paths on sustainability...

January 2024

Investors ‘flying blind’ into legal risk of climate change, Oxford researchers warn

As investors assess climate-related financial risk, they are "flying blind" to the risk of climate lawsuits that could hit companies with trillions in damages, according to a research report from Oxford Sustainable Law Programme published Jan. 11 in Science. The Oxford Sustainable Law Programme is a joint initiative of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford, England. Current practices used by investors to assess the financial risk of climate change...

October 2023

Insights for helping employees build enduring financial wellness

By Always Designing for People Improving long-term financial wellness is a clear priority for many employees, according to a recent survey by Retirement Insights, LLC. Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents said they prefer saving for the future over spending on current needs. Yet, many of them find some pieces of the retirement planning puzzle to be unclear and would like financial education from their employer to help them with complicated calculations and decisions. You can fulfill this unmet need and make...

September 2023

How Africa’s pension funds are financing the continent’s infrastructure gap

African countries have huge infrastructure needs, and governments need private investment to help meet them, particularly considering increasing climate impacts and green development agendas. Local pension funds and other institutional investors are a significant but untapped source of finance. Two examples of pension fund consortiums, in Kenya and South Africa, offer promising models for engaging Africa’s institutional investors in closing the infrastructure financing gap and meet the continent’s growing infrastructure development needs. In just three years, these two consortiums have...

June 2023

ESG resolution round-up: US pension giants split on climate proposal at Japanese bank

Big US public pension funds are divided on the merits of a climate proposal filed at Mizuho Financial Group which calls on the Japanese “mega-bank” to issue and disclose a transition plan to align its lending and investments with the Paris Agreement.     Californian giants CalPERS and CalSTRS have pre-disclosed that they will vote against the resolution on Friday, despite supporting a similar request at the bank in 2020. But The Office of the New York City Comptroller, which oversees...