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Focus on medium-term, too, can add 1-1.5% to returns

As institutional investors have been hit hard by events of the past 18 months, there has been a surge of interest in the adoption of an additional, mid-term, time frame in which to provide investment targets. Watson Wyatt believes pension funds should allocate between 5 and 15 per cent of their risk budget to dynamic

Target Date Funds: Looking beyond the glide path

Target date funds vary in their broad asset allocation, in their sub-asset allocation of the broader asset classes, and their implementation. This paper outlines some methodologies across providers, highlighting the different risks associated with the various strategies and illustrating the impact on performance over both a longer period, as well as a shorter, more volatile,

Time to mend relationships in investment management

A new KPMG report, ‘Renewing the promise: Time to mend relationships in investment management”, shows the investment management industry should work to rebuild trust with investors through a ‘back-to-basics’ client relationship approach, increase knowledge sharing, and bolster corporate governance and risk management transparency.

The risky proposition of US defined contribution plans

In the US, defined contribution plans have grown in importance but are relatively new to economic and regulatory uncertainty. In an environment such as this, Watson Wyatt suggests specific practices for managing fiduciary liability and optimising plan value for participants, with the possible result of revising the plan’s investment structure.

Quantifying labor and human rights portfolio risk

This paper, by senior research fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, Aaron Bernstein, explores how pension funds can gather quantifiable, independently audited data on the risks posed by labor and human rights activities of global companies, that is analogous to financial information, and how investors can help facilitate the acceptance