November 2022
04Nov

Pension funds can influence a major shift in ESG investing

Year after year, parties to the UN Climate Change Conference make pledges to mend their ways in key focus areas such as carbon emissions. The centrality of finance as the catalyst for change in climate matters has been reiterated. As such, pension funds can loop in to make a change and simultaneously derive satisfactory value for their members. Possibly the largest mobiliser of private finance globally, pension funds are a potential superpower in the climate change battle. With Kenya’s assets...

November 4, 2022
News,
Read more...
03Nov

Risk Pooling and Precautionary Saving in Village Economies

By Marcel Fafchamps & Aditya Shrinivas We propose a new method to test for efficient risk pooling that allows for intertemporal smoothing, non-homothetic consumption, and heterogeneous risk and time preferences. The method is composed of three steps. The first one allows for precautionary savings by the aggregate risk pooling group. The second utilizes the inverse Engel curve to estimate good-specific tests for efficient risk pooling. In the third step, we obtain consistent estimates of households' risk and time preferences using...

November 3, 2022
Articles, Savings, , ,
Read more...
03Nov

Netherlands. PFZW divests from 114 fossil fuel companies

Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn, Zeist, Netherlands, sold its holdings in 114 fossil fuel companies at a value of €470 million ($468 million) because they did not yet have plans to reduce their carbon emissions. The pension fund said in a notice on its website that it had also entered into discussions with 13 major fossil fuel companies, such as Shell and BP, about their climate ambitions and how they will be net-zero by 2050. Starting in 2024, PFZW will only invest...

November 3, 2022
News, ,
Read more...
01Nov

No haircuts for pension funds or anybody, says Ghana’s president

Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo ruled out losses for bond investors as a result of negotiations with the IMF for a $3bn bailout. Talks with the IMF are “going well”, Akufo-Addo said in a speech broadcast on Sunday in the capital, Accra. The president criticised speculation in the West African nation predicting a so-called haircut for investors, which he said has triggered renewed selling of the cedi. “No individual or institutional investor, including pension funds, in government Treasury bills or instruments will...

November 1, 2022
News,
Read more...

October 2022
31Oct

UK. Increased pension engagement could trigger ‘unintended consequences’

Successfully engaging people with their pensions could result in “unintended consequences”, particularly given the current economic environment, Aon has said. Although Aon highlighted UK Pensions Awareness Week as an “opportunity” for the financial industry to connect with people and encourage active engagement with retirement savings, it acknowledged the difficulties presented by to the current cost-of-living issues. Among the issues highlighted by Aon was the possibility that individuals could be more inclined to cease their contributions or request early access to their...

October 31, 2022
News, , , ,
Read more...
31Oct

Hong Kong pension fund arrears hit 3-year high as coronavirus impact continues to devastate businesses

Pension fund contribution arrears among Hong Kong employers have hit a three-year high amid the Covid-19 slump and an average of 28,500 default notices a month have been issued to non-compliant businesses since April, the city’s pensions supervisor has revealed. Ayesha Macpherson Lau, the chairwoman of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority, wrote on her official blog on Sunday she was concerned the increase in defaulting companies could weaken retirement protection for employees and promised to take steps to help...

October 31, 2022
News, , ,
Read more...
28Oct

US. Faculty Wants Pensions Out of Fossil Fuels

Student activists have been demanding that higher education institutions divest their endowments from fossil fuel companies for over a decade. Now, as more institutions move toward sustainable investment, a group of faculty is calling on its pension fund to go green. About 300 clients of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America–College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA), which hundreds of higher education institutions use to invest faculty members’ pensions, are calling on the fund to divest from companies they say...

October 28, 2022
News, ,
Read more...
25Oct

Pensions regulator plays down LDI risk to EU

Eiopa doubts UK gilt market chaos could occur to same degree in Europe Read also Swiss regulator expects underfunding for pension funds facing volatility The European Union’s top pensions and insurance regulator is cautiously optimistic that the chaos suffered by UK pension funds will not be crossing the Channel any time soon. When government bond prices moved against them in late September, the funds were left scrambling to meet large margin calls on derivatives and leveraged repo positions. “Our insurance and...

October 25, 2022
News, ,
Read more...
25Oct

Canada pension fund to pour $470m into Japanese renewables company

Major Canadian pension fund CDPQ plans to invest 70 billion yen ($474 million) in Shizen Energy, a Japanese developer of renewable energy. Demand is increasing for environmentally conscious investing globally. If Japanese renewable energy companies can build a track record at home and abroad, they will be able to attract global decarbonization money. CDPQ will invest 20 billion yen by subscribing to Shizen Energy convertible bonds in October. In addition, 50 billion yen has been set aside for an investment framework...

October 25, 2022
News, , ,
Read more...
25Oct

Swiss regulator expects underfunding for pension funds facing volatility

The Swiss occupational pension supervisory commission – OAK BV – expects that a number of pension funds will end up underfunded at the end of the year as a result of market volatility and negative returns. Some pension funds may decide to ultimately trigger restructuring measures, depending on the specific situation of the scheme. Funding ratios of Swiss pension schemes in fact continued to fall this year, from 103.4% at the end of June to 99.5% at the end of September,...

October 25, 2022
News, ,
Read more...