State Pension Fund Management

Book description

People are getting older. The dramatic shifts in demographics coupled with budgetary constraints have, over the past 15 years, forced national authorities to overhaul arrangements for meeting their future pension liabilities – first in Europe and now in Asia.

Yet many systems remain under-funded and unreformed, and all face looming liabilities as populations age and the ratio of workers to retirees shrinks.

This new book, from Risk Books, through a series of case-studies, will explore these challenges, as well as the opportunities for investment their mandates allow.

While state pension funds share many qualities of their private-sector counterparts and asset managers in the public sector, they face a unique set of challenges derived from their funding, governance and liability arrangements.

This book recognises the professionalism and emerging identity of the state pension funds as a sector and drawing on global best practice it places this in an Asian context.

It provides a benchmark for good practice in an important and dynamic sector about which, to date, there have been relatively few targeted publications.

Individual chapters focus on: Asia’s demographic challenge, China’s pension system, governance and risk management, establishing benchmarks, the challenges faced by the Asia’s developed pension sectors, the use of external managers and the opportunity and risk of alternative assets.

Authors include: Alan Brown, Professor Mukal Asher, Stuart Leckie, Carl Redondo, Naomi Denning, Hiroshi Yamabana, Douglas Robertson and Professor Jennifer Wang.

Book details

ISBN

9781906348168

Publish date

1 Oct 2009

Format

Size

155mm x 235mm

Editor biography

Aaron Woolner

Aaron Woolner is the editor of Life & Pensions magazine, a London-based publication focusing on risk and capital management issue affecting both sectors. He joined Life & Pensions as a staff writer in 2005, just three issues after the publication was launched, and since then has covered the sectors from a global perspective, with regular travel to North America and Asia in addition to maintaining a strong focus on the European market. As well as Life & Pensions he also regularly has work published in Risk, Asia Risk and Credit magazines.

Aaron studied economics and history at the University of Manchester before completing a post graduate journalism course at the London College of Printing. Before joining Life & Pensions he covered oil, gas and power for online newswire Infrastructure Journal.

Table of contents

PART I INTRODUCTION

1 The Building Blocks of a Robust Pension System

Alan Brown, Alastair Baker

Schroder Investment Management Limited

2 State Pensions: A Survey

Aaron Woolner

Incisive Media

PART II ASIA OVERVIEW

3 Asia’s Demographic Challenge

Jennifer Wang

National Chengchi University

4 Governance and Regulation of Provident and Pension Funds in Selected Asian Countries

Mukul G. Asher

National University of Singapore

5 Social Security Pensions in Asia: A Summary of Key Challenges

Hiroshi Yamabana

International Labour Organization

PART III CASE STUDIES

6 China’s Pension System

Stuart Leckie

Stirling Finance Limited

7 Reforming the Japanese Pension System

Noriyuki Takayama

Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

8 Strategic Asset Allocation: France’s Fonds de Reserve pour les Retraites Response to the Crisis of 2008–9

Aaron Woolner

Incisive Media

9 How Sweden’s AP1 Selects and Monitors External Managers

Rikard Kjörling

Första AP-fonden

PART IV RISK MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE

10 Alternative Assets and Public Pension Plan Performance

Douglas Robertson and Ellen Wielezynski

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

11 Investment Governance and How It Impacts on Investment Results

Naomi Denning

Watson Wyatt Worldwide