Population aging will affect the performance of pension funds and financial markets in the former transition economies and require determined policy actions to complete financial market development ...and to promote financial literacy through education.
The Chinese pension system is highly fragmented and decentralized, with governance standards, pension fund management practices, their regulation and supervision varying considerably both across the ...funded components of the Chinese pension system and across provinces. This paper describes the key components of the system, highlights the progress made to date and identifies remaining weaknesses, in regard to information disclosure, the governance framework and pension fund management standards.
This paper discusses the key sources of vulnerabilities for pension plans and insurance companies in light of the global financial crisis of 2008. It also discusses how these institutional investors ...transit shocks to the rest of the financial sector and economy. The crisis has re-ignited the policy debate on key issues such as: 1) the need for countercyclical funding and solvency rules; 2) the tradeoffs implied in marked based valuation rules; 3) the need to protect contributors towards retirement from excessive market volatility; 4) the need to strengthen group supervision for large complex financial institutions including insurance and pensions; and 5) the need to revisit the resolution and crisis management framework for insurance and pensions.
This paper provides an assessment of the funded pension system and the quality of the regulatory framework for both accumulation and payout phase. It suggests that the lack of portfolio ...diversification may contribute in the future to low returns and poor pensions and provides a number of recommendations to expand the opportunities of investments to pension funds. The paper also finds that pension fund administrators are not exploiting the scale economies in certain areas of the business such as collection of revenues and account management, and proposes mechanisms to reduce costs and increase efficiency through greater competition. The paper examines the products and options offered at retirement age and finds a bias toward the payment of pensions in the form of lump sums and suggests alternatives for improving the availability of other instruments. Enhancements to the regulatory framework of insurance companies are also proposed.
This paper is the first that examines the impact of stock market performance on the investment policy of pension funds. We find that stock market prices influence the asset allocation of Dutch ...pension funds in two ways. In the short term, outperformance of equities over bonds and other investment categories automatically results in a higher actual equity allocation (and vice versa), as pension funds do not continuously rebalance their investment portfolios. Each quarter, pension funds rebalance, on average, around 39 percent of excess equity returns, leaving 61 percent for free floating. In the medium term, outperformance of equities induces pension funds to increase their strategic equity allocation (and vice versa). These findings suggest that the investment policies of pension funds are partially driven by the cyclical performance of the stock market. Pension funds respond asymmetrically to stock market shocks: rebalancing is much stronger after negative equity returns. On average, this strategy led to negative excess returns over the period under consideration. Investment policies of large funds deviate from that of small funds: they hold more equity and their equity allocation is much more strongly affected by actual equity returns, reflecting less rebalancing. The largest funds react highly asymmetrically to positive excess equity returns, adjusting their portfolios by significantly more than 100%, reflecting ‘overshooting’ of free floating, or positive feedback trading. Apparently, managers of large funds demonstrate great risk tolerance, particularly in bull markets.
This paper is the first that examines the impact of stock market performance on the investment policy of pension funds. We find that stock market prices influence the asset allocation of Dutch ...pension funds in two ways. In the short term, outperformance of equities over bonds and other investment categories automatically results in a higher actual equity allocation (and vice versa), as pension funds do not continuously rebalance their investment portfolios. Each quarter, pension funds rebalance, on average, around 39 percent of excess equity returns, leaving 61 percent for free floating. In the medium term, outperformance of equities induces pension funds to increase their strategic equity allocation (and vice versa). These findings suggest that the investment policies of pension funds are partially driven by the cyclical performance of the stock market. Pension funds respond asymmetrically to stock market shocks: rebalancing is much stronger after negative equity returns. On average, this strategy led to negative excess returns over the period under consideration. Investment policies of large funds deviate from that of small funds: they hold more equity and their equity allocation is much more strongly affected by actual equity returns, reflecting less rebalancing. The largest funds react highly asymmetrically to positive excess equity returns, adjusting their portfolios by significantly more than 100%, reflecting 'overshooting' of free floating, or positive feedback trading. Apparently, managers of large funds demonstrate great risk tolerance, particularly in bull markets.
