As the Chancellor saves £60bn by raising the retirement age earlier, pension providers are lagging behind, says Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
The most telling figure in the Autumn Statement delivered by Chancellor George Osborne in November was that extending the virtual wage freeze on public sector workers is projected to save about £1bn. But government will save £60bn by bringing forward by eight years to 2026 the trigger...
Keeping investment management in house seems to have contributed to the success of the best performing large funds explains Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
It is well understood that several of the most challenged pension schemes are those of what we used to call the nationalised industries – the giant utilities privatised in the 1980s by the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher – and some like the Post Office scheme which never quite...
The amount of speculative money flowing in and out of the markets has the power to distort prices explains Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
Twenty years ago it was only in the foreign exchange market that the underlying business activity was dwarfed by speculation – meaning that the foreign currency needed for the buying and selling of imports and exports was well under 10% of the global daily volume.
Today similar conditions...
Too few members could have a big impact both on local authority schemes and on Nest, warns
Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
The local authority pension schemes, most of which are funded in the same way as private sector schemes, have been blunt in their warnings about the effect of sharply increased contributions on the willingness of members to stay enrolled. The government’s attempts to ease the financial...
Gold stands out from the wider commodities basket
says Juan Carlos Artigas, World Gold Council
2011 has proven to be a volatile year for most commodities, due in part to heightened geopolitical risk, severe weather conditions, tighter margin requirements for silver futures, concerns about the changing regulatory landscape and uncertainty over global economic growth all contributing to...
It pays to be sceptical about solutions offered by financial advisers and to negotiate hard on price says Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
It is fashionable these days to talk about solutions. Consultants and investment bankers offer them to companies and pension trustees who buy them because they are told that the solution will address a problem.
It does, but it is more often that the problem addressed belongs to the banker...
Trustees are going to have to get used to presenting their side of the story as they come under greater scrutiny warns Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
The near collapse of the highly geared Southern Cross care homes business a few weeks ago brought a torrent of abuse down on the head of Blackstone, the private equity group which had put the business together in its current form, and turned a hostile spotlight on the private equity sector as a...
Are your hedges as well trimmed as you think? asks Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
The great shift in investment philosophy in recent years in defined benefit pensions has been the change in emphasis from a focus on growing the assets to matching the liabilities. The use of swaps to hedge inflation and interest rate risks has become commonplace.
It has been big business for...
Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard, gives the story behind government statistics and the implications of the need to reduce personal debt
Government statistics which seek to measure economic activity are almost always inaccurate at first cut because of the complexity of what they seek to measure. Thus we grow used to the growth figures for one quarter being adjusted up or down in the next. But they are also subject, perhaps once a...
Impact investments are set to explode over the next decade explains Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
One of the oldest divisions in investment is between money put into a project to generate a financial return and money put into a project to create a social benefit. They are considered the opposite ends of the spectrum.
But in the first analysis by a mainstream investment bank into the...
Pension schemes need to keep an eye on what’s going on over there concerning pension regulation warns Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
One of the biggest challenges facing the insurance industry is adjusting to the requirements of Solvency II, which is a Europe wide directive which aims to introduce standardised reporting for the industry right across the Union. For the first time, it will be possible to compare the accounts of...
Despite the impressive success of exchange traded funds, UK pension schemes are reluctant to use them. Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard, explains
Some six years ago the chief executive of one of our leading fund management companies told me he was thinking of leaving the business because, looking into the future, he could not see why anyone would buy his funds. It made so much more sense he said to invest through exchange traded funds. And...
DC schemes are vulnerable to sudden changes in legislation and expectations, not least retirement date says Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
If there is one lesson which the world of pensions should have no difficulty in grasping, given the experience of the past decade, it is that pensions can be dramatically affected by events over which they have no control.
For example, no pension manager could have foreseen the plunge in...
Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard, reports on a recent study offering an insight into how the world of intermediaries operates
Paul Wooley used to be a money manager – and a very good one, too – but decided later in life to try to make the City a saner place. So he became an academic and provided the funds specifically to study dysfunctionality in financial markets. He has been in his element in recent years...
Investment committees are so transfixed by regulation they are missing the bigger picture, says Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
If you are a member of the investment committee of a pension scheme, then the big issue ought surely to be what is happening in the global economy, what those events are likely to mean for markets and, given what one expects markets to do, whether the fund is as well positioned as it could be....
Maybe it is time to abolish tax relief on pensions, suggests Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
At a pensions conference recently the audience of trustees, consultants, managers and assorted hangers-on was asked, by means of these now ubiquitous key pad voting devices, whether it thought pensions saving should continue to attract tax relief. A year ago the question would not have been asked...
Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard, on the urgency of replacing the huge losses in the financial system with fresh capital
For a business which is so dependent on the price and availability of capital, there has been surprisingly little deep thinking about what the financial crisis means for the pensions industry.
The huge losses in the financial system have somehow to be replaced and that will require vast amounts...
Significant levy savings are possible by making some simple changes says Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
The chances are that over the next few years the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) will increase the levy on the still operating defined benefit (DB) schemes through which it funds its activities and ensures the solvency of the scheme, in the face of what looks likely to be a steady increase in the...
The destruction of the nation’s private pension system is the biggest single indictment of this government argues Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
As election fever picks up across the country, the parties lob insults at each other on all manner of trivial and petty things, but pensions just do not get mentioned.
No one expects pensions to be an election issue, but imagine what the debate would be like if Gordon Brown had done to house...
The pensions industry is crying out for more products to manage and mitigate longevity risk urges Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard
Inflation is one of the notable risks which pension schemes face and no one knows what the rate of inflation will be in three months, in three years or in 30 years’ time. In theory this could be a major problem for defined benefit (DB) pension schemes in managing their liabilities. But in...
