October 2026
16Oct

The Duration Gap: Value-at-Risk, Interest-Rate Swaps and the 2026 Losses of Chile’s Most Conservative Pension Fund

By Alfredo Merlet Between January and September 2026, Fund E, the most conservative of Chile's five mandatory pension fund types, lost about ten per cent in real terms, its second-worst result on record, while the funds' positions in foreign interest-rate derivatives swung to a reported valuation loss of about US$7.7 billion. This article asks why standard Value-at-Risk (VaR) measures did not warn of the loss. Using daily unit values for the seven pension fund administrators (AFPs) from January 2015 to...

October 16, 2026
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September 2026
09Sep

South Africa. FSCA puts retirement fund fees and returns under scrutiny

The regulator of pension funds, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), will implement a value framework to measure if the benefits and returns received by retirement funds members justify the fees paid to the funds. A value framework is a system designed to assess whether individual pension funds are delivering adequate value to their members, and can be codified in law. The announcement of a value framework was made by FSCA divisional executive for retirement funds supervision Zareena Camroodien, speaking at...

September 9, 2026
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August 2026
18Aug

Malaysia’s pension fund investment income jumps 48 pct in H1

Malaysia's state-owned pension fund, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), recorded investment income of 57.50 billion ringgit (14.16 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of 2026, up 48 percent from a year earlier, helped by strong global equity markets, the fund said Monday. Investment income for the second quarter also rose 44 percent year-on-year to 29.77 billion ringgit, the retirement fund said in a statement. EPF Chief Executive Officer Ahmad Zulqarnain Onn said the fund benefited from strong global equity markets...

August 18, 2026
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July 2026
15Jul

US. CalPERS Posts 14.8% Preliminary Investment Return

Strong performance in both its public and private equity portfolios helped the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) achieve a preliminary net investment return of 14.8% for the 12-month period ending June 30, 2026, the pension system reported Monday. The 2025-26 fiscal year return exceeded both last year’s 11.6% performance and the assumed 6.8% rate of return set by the CalPERS Board of Administration. It is also CalPERS’ highest mark in five years and represents a four-year trend of higher...

July 15, 2026
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10Jul

Regulatory Priorities: Pensions

By Financial Conduct Authority The Regulatory Priorities report for the pensions sector includes the following priorities: Ensuring well-run schemes that provide value for money to savers: The FCA explains that it expects the proposed workplace pensions Value for Money framework and the Government’s wider Pension Schemes Bill to help drive positive change and that it wants firms to engage in the development of these changes and prepare to implement and embed them in a way that best supports savers. Encouraging effective...

July 10, 2026
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03Jul

How Rational Is AI Investment Advice? Risk-Return Relevance in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Investments

By Nanying Lin, Oscar Gilbert & Tianxiang Chu Textbook finance theories indicate that investors demand risk premia from risky assets as compensation for risk and for hedging against future unfavorable economic states. We design a comprehensive study to examine whether investment advice generated by artificial intelligence (AI) reflects a coherent risk–return pattern in investment decision-making. We find that AI advises investors to increase stock investments when return increases and reduce stock allocations when stock volatility increases. However, AI ignores the...

July 3, 2026
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01Jul

Retirees Don’t Need to Fear a Lost Decade. They Need a Plan

We recently interviewed flat-fee financial advisor Adam Grossman for Morningstar’s “The Long View” podcast and asked him about his biggest worry for current retirees. The answer? The possibility of another “lost decade,” when stocks fail to generate positive returns over an extended period. The last time that happened was during the 2000s, when the bear market in tech stocks early in the decade was followed by another series of sharp losses during the global financial crisis. An event like that is particularly...

July 1, 2026
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June 2026
16Jun

US. Investment Returns Outweigh Small Liability Jump for Pension Finances

Surging investment returns outpaced slow-growing liabilities in May, bringing the funded status of the 100 largest U.S. corporate defined benefit pension funds to 109.6%—the highest ratio recorded since the 109.9% mark observed in July 2001—according to Milliman’s Pension Funding Index. Thanks to last month’s robust 2.22% investment return, more than quadruple Milliman’s expected rate of 0.53%, the market value of Milliman 100 plan assets grew $22 billion during May. The projected pension liability for Milliman 100 plans increased by $4 billion over...

June 16, 2026
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02Jun

South Korea. [Retirement Pension Investment Strategy] “During Booms, Focus on Indexes… Systematic Investing Is Key to Beating Volatility”

Last year, for the first time ever, the accumulated amount of retirement pension funds in Korea surpassed 500 trillion won, illustrating the continuous growth of the domestic retirement pension market. In addition, the Korean stock market has been experiencing a record-breaking bull run, and the domestic exchange-traded fund (ETF) market has also expanded to 500 trillion won, leading to greater public interest in financial investment than ever before. However, despite this rapid growth, the polarization of returns among retirement...

June 2, 2026
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May 2026
07May

Canadian DB pension plans return 0.4% in Q1 2026 amid geopolitical tensions: report

The typical Canadian defined benefit pension plan posted a median return of 0.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, according to a new report by RBC Investor Services. It found Canadian equity allocations returned 3.9 per cent in the quarter, matching the TSX composite index. Energy led sector gains with a 30.1 per cent surge following the Strait of Hormuz closure, while materials rose strongly early in the period, pulled back significantly in March and finished with a...

May 7, 2026
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