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PFZW reformulates investment principles

PFZW, the €150 billion ($205 billion) Dutch pension fund for the health care industry, has created a new investment framework which is the result of an 18-month soul-searching journey under a project called “The White Sheet of Paper”. The framework will translate into policy and implementation steps starting from 2015. Jaap van Dam, PGGM´s chief

Risk parity – the benefits of a conditional approach

Risk parity is a meaningful and robust approach for building well-diversified portfolios, but it relies on historical volatility estimates, which penalises upside risk as well as downside risk and leads to a massive overweighting of bonds versus equities, even in a low yield environment. The authors from EDHEC Risk-Institute build the case for an alternative

The in-house investment team: right people, roles, rewards

Good people are at the core of any successful organisation, and that is true for asset owners. Global chief investment officer of Towers Watson, Craig Baker discusses how designing and implementing structures that attract the right people in the right roles can unlock long-term sustainable advantages that the right investment team can offer.   It

Ubiquitous and adaptive investing – the aspiration of a truly global fund

Large pension funds might be invested on a truly global basis but their operating models are rarely global structures. Towers Watson argues that asset owners can benefit from a business model that can deliver organisational performance, manages talent and aligns with core missions from multiple operating locations. Over the last decade, large pension funds and

Evolution in risk reporting for sophisticated institutional investors

Risk reporting is increasingly regarded by sophisticated investors as an important ingredient in their decision-making process, authors from EDHEC argue that  the effective number of (uncorrelated) bets could be a useful risk indicator to be added to risk reports for equity and policy portfolios. Risk reporting is increasingly regarded by sophisticated investors as an important

Challenges facing the world’s biggest funds

In the coming weeks, Towers Watson will be writing a series of articles, exclusive to conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, that look at key challenges facing large asset owners. These will focus on specific practicalities that many global funds are encountering such as the role of internal teams. To put these challenges in context, this first article by global