November 2022

U.K. Pension savers ‘lost £1.7 billion on retirement transition

New research from HSBC Tomorrow Master Trust shows workplace pension scheme members are losing around £1.7 billion a year during their transition into and in retirement, due to savers choosing costly pathways to access their money. While some of this loss comes from scheme members withdrawing more than the 25% tax-free lump sum, exposing them to hefty tax penalties, many are potentially buying products that are not the optimal solution for their circumstances. The research was commissioned for a report Converting...

Global top 300 pension funds

By Thinking Ahead Institute and Pensions & Investments Pension fund industry trends Growth headwinds test financial and sustainability mandate resilience Has the macro reality shifted from ‘lower-for-longer’ to ‘end-of-cheap-money’? The last decade’s fear of deflation has been replaced by significantly higher inflation. A steep rate hike cycle has led to more interest rate volatility and is placing pressure on pension funds to deliver sufficient risk-adjusted returns. Pension funds are expected to face elevated macro uncertainty over the short term. The industry has...

The Financialization of U.S. Public Pensions, 1945-1974

By Sean Vanatta This article examines a major transformation public employee pension investment in the United States, from investing public funds in public infrastructure in the 1940s and 1950s, to investing public funds in private securities—corporate bonds, stocks, and mortgages—in the 1960s and 1970s. Three factors drove this change. First, in the adjacent field of professional asset management, motivated financial elites orchestrated a shift in state-level trust law, from legally-sanctioned investment lists, which encouraged amateur investment and safety, to the...

Ranked: The World’s 100 Biggest Pension Funds

Despite economic uncertainty, pension funds saw relatively strong growth in 2021. The world’s 100 biggest pension funds are worth over $17 trillion in total, an increase of 8.5% over the previous year. This graphic uses data from the Thinking Ahead Institute to rank the world’s biggest pension funds, and where they are located. What is a Pension Fund? A pension fund is a fund that is designed to provide retirement income. This ranking covers four different types: Sovereign funds: Funds controlled directly by...

UK. MPs told ‘illegal’ LDIs fanned gilt crisis

The flames of the crisis in the gilt market following the Mini Budget were fanned by widely used liability driven investments (LDIs) that were “almost certainly illegal”, MPs were told yesterday. At a hearing in front of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, experts criticised LDIs for being highly leveraged, causing "carnage" for some pension schemes, and blamed regulators for not acting previously. Bond market veteran Dr Con Keating, now head of research at the specialist insurer Brighton Rock Group, said...

US. Here’s How Much Rising Rates Help Pension Plan Liabilities

Rising interest rates may be a bane for the fixed-income section of pension plans’ portfolios. But the ascending rates tend to have a benign influence on pension liabilities. A study by NISA Investment Advisors sketches out how much, and also spotlights little-appreciated side effects. Boosting long-term rates means that the liabilities, or the plans’ discounted value of future cash flows, decrease. All things being equal, this situation tends to produce the welcome result of enhancing plans’ funded status. By NISA’s calculations,...

P&I Research Center. Public Pension Plan Benchmarks

Prepared by: Valerie Ge, CFA Research Analyst This report intends to provide insights into the overall and asset class benchmarks selected by the 50 largest U.S. public defi ned benefi t plans. The top 50 plans are selected based on their reported U.S. DB asset totals in Pensions & Investments’ 2021 survey. Eleven out of 50 plans did not disclose enough detailed information, and 10 plans had a fi scal year ended other than June 30. Insights into the overall and...

UK regulators call for action on hidden leverage threat to pension funds

Regulators and policymakers are calling for action to address the risks associated with pension funds’ use of derivatives, after key watchdogs admitted last week that they were unprepared for the crisis that hit the industry in September. The meltdown, now the focus of four separate parliamentary probes, revealed regulators did not have a reliable picture of the scale of hidden leverage in liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies, which cover about £1.4tn of the future promises made by UK defined benefit pension...

India. Government pension funds need more lucrative investment avenues to quell controversy between old and new schemes

By Gautam Mukherjee When the Vajpayee administration introduced the new pension system (NPS) for Central and other government employees commencing on 1 January 2004, the motivation was to ensure long-term viability. It is mandatory for the Central government employees and a few other entities. Much greater longevity had complicated the calculations on the old pension system (OPS). The threat of a bankrupt state defaulting on pensions, such as West Bengal, Kerala or Punjab today, was already beginning to loom large in...

The Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman and other experts will celebrate 25th anniversary of the Mexican pension system at Encuentro Amafore 2022

Encuentro Amafore 2022 will take place at the Citibanamex Center on the 16 and 17 of November, with keynote speeches by the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman; 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and geopolitical expert Anne Applebaum; the political scientist, writer and professor at Stanford University, Francis Fukuyama; and the Director of Strategic Alliances and Contents of América Móvil, Arturo Elías Ayub. It will also feature keynote addresses by the director of strategic functions at BlackRock, Peter Fisher; Franklin...