June 2020
23Jun

COVID19 impact on the pension risk transfer market

This has had a compounding impact on the premium rates insurers charge for BPA policies. The strong demand from trustees and sponsors of pension schemes to purchase BPAs during 2019 gave insurers a strong negotiating hand to choose which counterparties they would engage with. Consequently, insurers’ focus has gravitated towards larger transactions (where the prize was worth the risk of being unsuccessful). Whilst competition amongst insurers enabled larger schemes to maintain a comparatively strong negotiating...

June 23, 2020
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16Jun

Australia’s Biggest Pension Fund Eyes PE, Credit Amid Low Rates

AustralianSuper, the nation’s largest pension fund, is seeking private-equity opportunities and looking to lift credit holdings as it sees limited returns from government bonds. The fund is holding more cash than it would traditionally, Mark Delaney, the chief investment officer of Melbourne-based AustralianSuper, told Bloomberg’s Inside Track series Tuesday. It is underweight government bonds and maintained its long-term weightings in equities during the market turbulence amid the coronavirus pandemic, Delaney said. “If we get a chance and the markets...

June 16, 2020
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15Jun

Pension giant and BNP Paribas AM unite for climate lobbying effort

AP7, BNP Paribas Asset Management and the Church of England Pensions Board have partnered with specialist advisory firm Chronos Sustainability to develop a framework to guide responsible corporate climate change lobbying The Swedish pension fund, French asset manager and English group have teamed up to better assess whether corporate lobbying is aligned with climate change goals, as set out in the Paris Agreement. The project will develop on existing efforts to create a credible and systematic means of measuring...

June 15, 2020
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08Jun

Building better retirement systems in the wake of the global pandemic

By Olivia S. Mitchell In the wake of the global pandemic known as COVID-19, retirees, along with those hoping to retire someday, have been shocked into a new awareness of the need for better risk management tools to handle longevity and aging. This paper offers an assessment of the status quo prior to the spread of the coronavirus, evaluates how retirement systems are faring in the wake of the shock. Next we examine insurance and financial market products that...

June 8, 2020
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05Jun

Silicon Valley Stories: A sampler of startups, stories, and lessons learned

By Adam Beguelin People think that joining a startup is a surefire way to get rich. The odds are against you, but it does happen. Silicon Valley Stories: A sampler of startups, stories, and lessons learned is about the hits and the misses. It’s about how people handle life in the start-up world. It includes true accounts from inside Inktomi, AOL, Truveo, and a handful of other Silicon Valley startups. As a tenured member of start-up culture, Beguelin...

June 5, 2020
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04Jun

Canada. Alberta public sector pension plan fund falls $3.4B in quarter, pointing to AIMCo losses

An Alberta public sector pension plan says its fund dropped by $3.4 billion — or 6.5 per cent — in the first quarter of the year, calling it an "extremely difficult" period for investors due to COVID-19's impact on financial markets. But the Local Authorities Pension Plan (LAPP), which has 275,000 members, is also pointing to losses at the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo), its mandatory investment manager under provincial legislation. LAPP says total asset losses...

June 4, 2020
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03Jun

South Africa’s Central Bank Rules Out Financing Government

South Africa’s central bank ruled out helping the government fund its runaway budget deficit by paying for its spending through loans, as the ruling party debates using the institution to fund infrastructure and development. “We do not think it is prudent to finance government directly,” Kuben Naidoo, a Reserve Bank deputy governor, said on a conference call hosted by money manager Ninety One. “It would increase inflation risks. It would blur the lines between an independent central bank...

June 3, 2020
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May 2020
29May

Pension Fund Managers dump Nigerian Treasury Bills

Analysis of the recently released summary of Pension Fund Asset data for the first two months of 2020 by the Pension Commission of Nigeria has shown that pension fund managers are no longer in love with Treasury Bills like they used to be in the past. Time was when fund managers allocated much of their assets to treasury bills, but that seems to be waning as yields on treasury bills head towards subzero. According to the analysis, pension fund...

May 29, 2020
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28May

Australian regulator urges poorly performing pension funds to find buyers, exit industry

Many Australian pension funds have been suffering from falling asset prices, liquidity pressures and declining investor inflows due to the coronavirus pandemic and some should consider finding a buyer, the industry regulator said on Wednesday. Trustees must “be able to demonstrate their ‘right to remain’,” the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) said in an article published on its website “For some the only way forward ... may be to exit the industry and pass on the trusteeship of their...

May 28, 2020
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20May

Canada. How are pension plan sponsors’ fiduciary duties evolving in the time of coronavirus?

While the coronavirus pandemic certainly doesn’t change pension plan sponsors’ fundamental fiduciary duty to their plan members, the crisis is creating circumstances that will test how that responsibility manifests. Fiduciary duty arises when one party has a certain vulnerability in respect to another party, said Kenneth Burns, partner at Lawson Lundell LLP, in a webinar roundtable hosted by the Association of Canadian Pension Management on Thursday. In a pension context, plan sponsors have a fiduciary duty to their members...

May 20, 2020
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