Since last March, the coronavirus pandemic has derailed the best-laid plans of many organizations, including the Toronto Transit Commission. With so many white-collar employees working from home, and worries about public health, it’s no secret the TTC’s ridership and revenue have been hit hard. Between the first and last weeks in March 2020, for example, […]
The San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement Association implemented a simple innovation 15 years ago that’s added nearly US$1 billion to the fund’s total value as of Aug. 31, 2020. That innovation is “informed rebalancing,” said Arun Muralidhar, adjunct professor of finance at George Washington University, when speaking at the Canadian Investment Review’s Investment Innovation Conference […]
Over the years, the York University pension plan has performed well by all objective measures and made major changes to its asset allocation. Speaking at the Canadian Investment Review’s Plan Sponsor Exchange conference in February, Guy Burry, chair of the university’s pension investment committee, credited these accomplishments to the committee’s encouragement of diverse thinking instead […]
While it’s easy for a plan sponsor to determine how an equity or fixed income manager is performing, it isn’t as straightforward to assess the performance of an outsourced chief investment officer. “There’s a lot of similarities in OCIO providers out there, but there’s also a lot of differences,” said Eric Menzer, global head of […]
Many pension plans use risk systems to test how different scenarios would affect their portfolios. Traditionally, risk models use thousands of scenarios. The likelihood that these scenarios will occur is weighted equally and generally reflects short-term asset characteristics. On the other hand, pension plans also use asset-liability models for long-term portfolio construction. This could result […]
Fund managers’ race appears to play a role in whether they’re selected by asset allocators, such as pension funds, according to a new report. The report, by Illumen Capital and a centre from Stanford University’s department of psychology, found racially diverse teams may face bigger barriers to advancement, even after they’ve established themselves as strong […]
In Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, pension funds are increasing their exposure to equities at the expense of fixed income, according to a new report by Mercer. Over the five-year measurement period, in aggregate, average allocations to equities for the growth markets covered rose eight percentage points to 40 per cent, while […]
After starting to manage assets for its first two clients in July 2017, the Investment Management Corp. of Ontario has released its 2018 annual report, but investment results will be announced by its clients this year. Currently, the IMCO manages $26 billion in net assets for the Ontario Pension Board and $34 billion for the […]
In 2016, when Bert Clark became the Investment Management Corp. of Ontario’s first president and chief executive officer, he was tasked with building the organization from scratch. Like a startup, he had the opportunity to begin from square one, free of legacy systems. “I think one of the advantages we have is that we’re 25 […]
Well-governed boards have greater international diversification and lower cash holdings, according to a working paper by Carolina Salva and Nadège Bregnard from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. “Why would pension fund board governance shape asset allocations?” the paper asked. “In our view, asset allocations are potentially associated to board inefficiencies that can arise when […]