October 2024
22Oct

$1.5 Trillion U.K. Pension Fund Eyes Entry into Crypto Tokenization

Legal & General (L&G), a major UK-based pension and investment management firm, is considering entering the blockchain tokenization market. With $1.5 trillion in assets under management, the company is considering how it can package its Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) liquidity funds in a tokenized manner. Tokenization is the process of transforming tangible assets such as property, natural resources such as oil and gas and even paintings into digital tokens. This makes it possible for the average investor to own...

October 22, 2024
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15Oct

UK. Govt launches National Wealth Fund to drive pension fund investment

The government has officially launched the National Wealth Fund and announced reforms to other public institutions to encourage additional pension fund investment into high-growth UK companies. The UK Infrastructure Bank is to be overhauled and rebranded as the National Wealth Fund. The announcement was made by chancellor Rachel Reeves at the government’s International Investment Summit in London yesterday (14 October). The fund is to receive £27.8bn and an expanded investment remit to support the government’s new industrial strategy, also announced yesterday. Its remit...

October 15, 2024
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15Oct

UK. PASA launches pensions dashboards toolkit

PASA today published the first content in its new ‘Dashboards Toolkit’. The Toolkit will be updated over time and the first releases include: A questionnaire for trustees to issue to their AVC providers in advance of connecting their scheme AVCs to dashboards A checklist and suggested list of activities for administrators to connect to and maintain AVC data A list of AVC providers and their connection methods Geraldine Brassett, Chair of the PASA Dashboards Scheme Configuration sub-group, commented: “PASA has...

October 15, 2024
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14Oct

30% of young Koreans support abolition of national pension system: poll

About 30 percent of Koreans, aged between 18 and 49, support the abolition of the national pension system amid waning public trust in the fund, a recent poll shows. According to a survey, released on Sunday, people in those age groups share a distrust of the sustainability of the fund, which is expected to be depleted around 30 years in the future. Asked to choose one of four options to improve its financial soundness — increasing the premium rate, focusing on...

October 14, 2024
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14Oct

US. What Does Inflation’s New Normal Mean for Public Pension Funds?

September’s Federal Reserve interest rate cut was meant to signal a win in the battle against inflation. With the highest inflationary peak in decades behind us, there was palpable relief at the idea of rates coming down. That may be especially true for public pension plan participants and plan sponsors. Over the past few years, more retiree groups have pushed for cost-of-living adjustments for their retirement benefits, as inflation eroded pension benefits. Some have been successful at getting ad hoc...

October 14, 2024
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03Oct

UK. FCA: ‘We’ve raised the bar, we never expected all funds to get SDR label’

There is a “healthy pipeline” of funds applying for SDR investment labels, in line with where the regulator expected the market to be at this stage, the Financial Conduct Authority has said. Alicia Kedzierski, head of sustainable finance at the FCA, told delegates at the UKSIF Good Money Week conference 10 labels had been awarded as of yesterday (October 2) and many more were in the pipeline. Though she could not say how many labels the regulator expects to authorise before...

October 3, 2024
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01Oct

UK. Industry must work to improve communication on sustainable pensions

There is an “enormous amount of work” to do to improve communication with savers about sustainable pensions, Harmonics founder and CEO, John Dithfield, has argued. Speaking at a Good Money Week event yesterday (September 30), Dithfield discussed the complexities of sustainable pensions and how difficult it can be for savers to fully understand them. “What should savers look for in a pension? I think it is very difficult really,” he said. “The real problem for people is the complexity of understanding what’s...

October 1, 2024
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September 2024
27Sep

Pension scheme assets – how they are invested and how and why they change over time

By The Pensions Policy Intitute We know both ‘quite a lot’ and ‘not enough’ about the assets that back current and future retirement incomes. Quite a lot because there are several sources of data that map pension fund assets and the way in which they are invested. Not enough because there are gaps in our knowledge and a multiplicity of data sets that classify assets in slightly different ways. The timing of different reports can also create difficulty mapping assets...

September 27, 2024
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26Sep

UK. Industry weighs in on government’s pension investment review

Industry experts have stressed the need to put member security at the forefront of any changes to the pension market, cautioning the government against potential mandating or legislating for particular investment allocations. The government recently launched a call for evidence to help inform the first phase of its pension investment review, which will aim to boost investment, increase pension pots and tackle waste in the pensions system. In its response to the consutlation, the Society of Pension Professionals (SPP) agreed that scale can deliver...

September 26, 2024
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25Sep

Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance unveils milestone emissions cuts

Institutional investors holding a combined $9.5 trillion of assets say they’ve slashed portfolio emissions at a rate that aligns them with the goal of limiting global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5C. The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, whose signatories include Allianz and the $519.9 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Sacramento, said in a statement on Sept. 25 that reduction in greenhouse gas emissions registered by its 88 members was at least 6% on average, annually, since 2018. At...

September 25, 2024
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