Reading Time: 5 minutes This article first appeared in the May 2016 edition of The Actuary magazine (here) The past 10 years have been a uniquely challenging, volatile and uncertain period for UK defined benefit pension schemes. How well have they weathered the storm? We found out by analysing data published by the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) in its … More Taming Pension Risk?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Your 10-Minute Guide to the Future of Asset Management. Download the full paper here >> no-ordinary-collision-v6-singlepage-HR It’s always easy to ignore or dismiss forecasts of the way the future may change our industry. Some might seem too obvious, some too far-fetched. We all exist in a daily whirlwind addressing the challenges of volatile markets and demanding … More No Ordinary Collision
Reading Time: 2 minutes The first 2016 update of the PPF index (of UK defined benefit pension funds) is just out, and it wasn’t pretty Falling long-dated interest rates over the month (the 30 year gilt rate fell by 0.3% to 2.3%) caused the present value of the liabilities to increase by some 6%, while the assets were virtually unchanged (presumably … More Pension Funding Levels Plunge in January 2016
Reading Time: 3 minutes Over the course of 2015 I had over 6,500 views of my blog posts (across the WordPress and LinkedIn platforms, an average of around 18 per day) – hardly viral I grant you but something I’m quite pleased with, given the admittedly relatively niche content! Overall in three years of blogging I’ve now received around … More Volatility & LDI – 2015’s Most Popular
Reading Time: 2 minutes In the final update of the PPF’s index of UK pension funds to be published in 2015, data showed that asset and liability values are set to end 2015 close to where they started, in spite of considerable volatility seen during the year. The overall funding level on the PPF basis was around 83% in November … More UK Pension Liabilities Steady in 2015
Reading Time: < 1 minute I’ve been talking a lot about LDI recently, for example see here and here, and these posts are popular- being among my most viewed this year! No particular catalyst for this I don’t think but it is interesting to look back and chart the expansion of what has become a significant part of the industry … More LDI (again!)
Reading Time: 4 minutes UK pension funds have been through a hell of a ride over the last 10 years, and more. changes in regulation, longevity, interest rates, equity markets and the changing fortunes of sponsoring companies have all contributed to making the UK pension industry a tricky place. But are the lessons learnt relevant to other investors, particularly Sovereign … More Five lessons from UK Pensions for SWFs and Others
Reading Time: 4 minutes The first 12 years of Liability Driven Investing (“LDI”) in the UK have seen remarkable growth in number of mandates (from a handful to over 1,000) and in liabilities hedged (from <1£bn to over £650bn). Overall, as I covered in a previous post I think it’s fair to say from a neutral standpoint that the … More The Future of LDI
Reading Time: < 1 minute The two charts below (data sourced from the PPF website) really tell you everything you need to know about risk management of UK pension funds over the last 10 years. Assets have grown steadily from c£700bn to c £1.3trn, although admittedly a very large part of this (possibly all of it) is due to contributions. … More A Decade of UK Pension Risk Management in 2 Charts
Reading Time: 3 minutes Market volatility this August caused many asset classes to be in the red when viewed over the year to 30 September 2015. We’ve long believed that to evaluate asset classes over long periods its more helpful to look at a measure of the risk-adjusted returns (such as the sharpe ratio) than pure returns – you … More Market Volatility Hits Asset Returns
