July 2025
04Jul

UK. European insurance giant acquires Pension Insurance Corporation in £5.7bn deal

Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC), the specialist bulk annuity provider, has been acquired by European insurance giant Athora in a deal worth an estimated £5.7bn. It will become the UK insurance business for Athora, which has existing presences in Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The acquisition is a significant boost for Athora as it will increase its assets under management and administration to more than €130bn (£112bn). At the end of 2024, PIC was responsible for almost £51bn of assets and...

July 4, 2025
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02Jul

US Government Reopens Discussion of Private Pension Investments Expectations

The Department of Labor has taken two recent actions that indicate where the approach to retirement investment policy may go under the new administration. Policy on the appropriate management of retirement funds has not been spared the tide of changes in the political landscape. While the language of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) sets the standard for plan fiduciaries to act “solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries,”1 the practical implications have been caught up in...

July 2, 2025
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June 2025
25Jun

US. Hollywood heavyweights call on pension fund to divest fossil fuels

More than 200 actors have signed an open letter to the trustees of the SAG-Producers Pension Plan asking it to divest from fossil fuels and redirect the assets into responsible investments. Members of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union have launched the Retire Big Oil campaign. The campaign asks the US$5 billion ($7.7bn) SAG-Producers Pension Plan to phase out its coal, oil and gas holdings. It notes that while many public and private...

June 25, 2025
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24Jun

Pension funds and monetary policy: Between burden and opportunity – WTW

On June 19, 2025, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) lowered its policy rate by 0.25 percentage points to 0.0%. This marks the second rate cut this year (fifth since June last year) and signals that the SNB is once again reacting more actively to cooling inflation and ongoing upward pressure on the Swiss franc. SNB President Martin Schlegel cited the subdued inflation outlook—current projections for the year are just 0.2%—as well as a globally uncertain environment. At the same time, the...

June 24, 2025
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20Jun

Planning: The Missing Link to Retirement Security. Retirement Survey & Insights Report 2024

By Goldman Sachs Michael Moran, a pension strategist in Goldman Sachs Asset Management, explains how the current macro environment is changing the retirement picture for both savers and retirees. Mike and his team are out with a new report that describes what they see as a missing link to retirement security. Get the report here

June 20, 2025
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20Jun

Nearly half of national public pension plan is invested in U.S. — and only 12% in Canada

As a former top Finance Department official, Susan Peterson played a key role years ago in creating the stable Canada Pension Plan that we see today. But even she was surprised by the numbers. A few weeks ago, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) revealed that 12 per cent of the CPP's assets are invested in Canada — its lowest level ever. The largest chunk of its $714-billion fund, 47 per cent, is currently invested in the United States...

June 20, 2025
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19Jun

UK. HoL committee raises concerns over potential mandation and regulatory overlaps

An increase in savings into pension funds may increase the amount of investment available for productive assets, the Financial Services Regulation Committee has found, although concerns around mandating pension fund investments remain. As part of its inquiry on the progress made in driving UK regulators to support growth, both in the financial services sector and in the wider UK economy, the committee received evidence suggesting that the UK pension sector is "fragmented" and underinvests in productive domestic assets due to...

June 19, 2025
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19Jun

Pension funds, insurers with $9.5 trillion in assets call for stopping deforestation

A coalition of pension funds and insurance companies holding a combined $9.5 trillion of assets has called on investors to ensure their portfolios aren’t supporting or enabling deforestation. The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, whose signatories include Allianz SE and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, said in a report published June 18 that investors should make certain they have a firm grasp of their exposure to deforestation and take steps to “phase out” any harms to forests stemming from their...

June 19, 2025
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18Jun

‘No choice to be absent from US markets’

US markets have historically played a key role in supporting pension fund performance, not just for CPP and OMERS but also for smaller Canadian plans, like UPP and OPTrust. But with current geopolitical and headwinds at play, are pension funds planning to change strategy? Jason Campbell believes that unless something drastic were to happen over the next year or two, most pensions will likely stay the course. After all, institutional investors typically plan for the long term and don’t get bogged...

June 18, 2025
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17Jun

Netherlands. Weaker US dollar hits pension funds harder than falling stock prices

At the end of the first quarter of 2025, Dutch pension funds managed assets worth €1,771 billion. Almost half of this, some €808 billion, is invested in currencies other than the euro.  This mostly concerns US dollar-denominated investments (€551 billion), of which €450 billion are investments in the United States. Source: DNB statistics At De Nederlandsche Bank, we independently compile statistics on the Dutch financial sector and economy. This article is based on these statistics. More information on our statistics and all dashboards...

June 17, 2025
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