August 2021
19Aug

China’s pension funds post surge in investment returns in 2020

Chinese pension funds posted an investment return rate of 15.84% last year, nearly doubling the 20-year average of 8.51%, a report from the National Council for Social Security Fund showed on Wednesday, partly due to a jump in domestic stock markets. China, the world's most populous country, has been looking to boost its investment returns and size of its pension funds, to cope with a looming demographic crunch as population growth slows. To counter the economic impact of rapid ageing and...

August 19, 2021
News, Slider, , , ,
Read more...
17Aug

US. Should the Federal Government ‘Green’ Its Pension Plan?

Climate change is posing an existential threat to more than just the planet. In fact, the federal government is concerned that weather-related risks will begin eroding the retirement portfolios of its employees. Read also US. Climate Change and Benchmarking Risk for Retirement Plans Earlier this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended that the board overseeing the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) for federal workers analyze the financial performance of companies in its portfolio, in light of risks related to climate change...

August 17, 2021
News, Slider, , ,
Read more...
17Aug

UK. 4 million under-40s missing out on pension investment returns due to low risk appetite

Around four million workers under 40 could be losing out on investment returns as they are in low-risk pensions that do not have potential for higher growth, according to research from Interactive Investor (II). The research, undertaken by Opinium, revealed that 66 per cent of people aged between 18 and 39, equal to around 10 million people, have a low-risk (25 per cent) or medium-risk (41 per cent) pension, whilst 19 per cent have a high-risk pension. Furthermore, over half (54...

August 17, 2021
News, Slider, , , ,
Read more...
16Aug

UK. I Don’t Want My Pension Funding Sunak’s Big Bang

The U.K. government is calling on the nation’s pension funds to participate in an “investment big bang” by allocating more capital to domestic and long-term illiquid investments. It’s a proposal that’s short on detail and fraught with difficulties, and one that pension fund trustees should treat with an abundance of caution. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak recently wrote an open letter to the overseers of Britain’s 2.6 trillion pound ($3.6 trillion) pension industry. They...

August 16, 2021
News, Slider, , ,
Read more...
12Aug

Analysis: UN climate report increases urgency for green investment funds

Dire warnings about climate change are a call to action for investors who put their money into helping the environment. But the news also heightens a debate about how to make these strategies effective, financial executives said. Read also Asia vast savings can bring on an ‘age of sustainability’ A U.N climate report on Monday found that global warming is dangerously close to spiraling out of control. Even the most severe carbon emission cuts are unlikely to prevent global warming of...

August 12, 2021
News, Slider,
Read more...
09Aug

Regulator drops plans to cap investments for UK pension schemes

The UK pensions regulator has abandoned plans to limit investment freedoms for retirement schemes holding billions of pounds of assets, as Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak urge trustees to plough more cash into supporting the UK recovery. Read also UK. Pandemic widens pensions pot gender gap The Pensions Regulator has confirmed to the Financial Times that it will not proceed with a proposal, first outlined in March, to cap investment in unquoted assets to no more than a fifth of a...

August 9, 2021
News, Slider, , ,
Read more...
06Aug

What’s the Ideal Asset Mix in Retirement? Is It 70/30? 60/40?

My wife and I are approaching retirement, and our financial adviser is recommending that we put about 70% of our nest egg in stocks and about 30% in bonds. This approach seems risky to me. Is it? My preferred mix is about 60/40. We hear questions frequently about asset allocation and pinpointing an optimal mix. The easy answer is: It depends. It depends, among other factors, on your ages, income from other sources (like Social Security and maybe a pension),...

August 6, 2021
News, Slider, ,
Read more...
05Aug

UK pension funds urged to back investment ‘big bang’

Boris Johnson has called on British pension funds to plough more retirement savers’ cash into UK assets to spark an “investment big bang” to support the economic recovery. In a letter to the investment industry, the prime minister and chancellor Rishi Sunak said UK institutional investors needed to “seize the moment” and use their “hundreds of billions of pounds” to back assets that often carry a longer term payback such as infrastructure, which includes bridges, roads and wind farms. Read also...

August 5, 2021
News, Slider, , ,
Read more...
03Aug

World’s biggest pension fund makes record cut to U.S. bond weighting

The Government Pension Investment Fund made a record cut to the weighting of Treasuries in its portfolio last fiscal year as the world’s safest asset led a global debt selloff. Read also US. Pandemic not stopping workers from contributing to retirement plans GPIF, as the world’s biggest pension fund is known, lowered U.S. government bonds and bills to 35% of its foreign debt holdings in the 12 months ended March, from 47% previously, according to an analysis by Bloomberg of the...

August 3, 2021
News, Slider, , ,
Read more...
03Aug

Investing for sustainability impact will transform capital allocation

By Jonathan Rogers Swimming through the acronym-laden waters of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) landscape involves an often irritating thrash through that overwhelming thick alphabet soup, but it behoves anyone with a vested interest in the topic to become effortlessly familiar with all the letters and what they stand for. The latest to rise to the surface is IFSI – investing for sustainability impact. At first glance, this acronym might seem like another term that describes ESG. But not so...

August 3, 2021
News, Slider, ,
Read more...