All articles by Magnus Spence
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OpinionData Crunch: DC property allocations set to catch DB
It seems logical that long-term savings should be invested in long-term assets, and property would seem a candidate for this type of investment.
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OpinionHow demand for multi-asset strategies is changing
For many years now we have seen growth in a new type of multi-asset in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
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OpinionData Crunch: Why DC market measures are so confusing
Each year we set about estimating the assets in workplace defined contribution schemes in the UK. Our latest conclusion is that the UK DC workplace market contained £338bn in assets in 2016.
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OpinionData Crunch: Retail and institutional – two very different investment worlds
Asset managers make a distinction between clients by calling some institutional and some retail. We all know this; what is less well-known is how different these two worlds are.
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OpinionData Crunch: An unhelpful binary
Everyone knows that passive investment is growing, but what do we mean by passive? The story is in some places more nuanced than it first appears.
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OpinionData crunch: Net flows highlight a European derisking trend
Although there are nuances between different markets, a derisking trend continues to be pervasive across Europe.
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OpinionData Crunch: Drawdown is the number one choice for new retirees
The extent of the impact pension freedoms are having on the retirement income market are becoming evident.
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OpinionData crunch: Why DB schemes will change their investments
The investment world's ceaseless quest for three-letter shorthand for jargon has now delivered CDI, or cash flow-driven investment – the younger sibling of liability-driven investment.
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OpinionData crunch: The DB market is growing fast
I often catch people talking about the ‘shrinkage’ of defined benefit. There are lots of things about this market that are shrinking: memberships are shrinking; the number of open DB schemes is shrinking.
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OpinionData crunch: How are DC schemes adjusting to the freedoms?
Less than 10 per cent of defined contribution default options intend to be targeting annuities in 2019. But what our research also shows is that while schemes are increasingly targeting drawdown as an outcome for members, few are planning to offer this within their scheme.
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OpinionData crunch: How big is the workplace DC market?
Eight years ago a client asked me how big the UK workplace defined contribution market is. The question was quite understandable. They were saying: “How big is this market? If I am going to invest to build products for it, I obviously need to know how big it is today.”
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OpinionData crunch: Who advises the DC scheme community?
The answers to this question show that there are still some differences between the trust and contract-based markets.
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OpinionData crunch: Investors revise fixed income mindsets
Traditionally labelled as ‘boring’, the fixed income asset class has livened up in recent years. The low-yield climate has created a waterfall effect where institutions move down the credit landscape in search of yield.
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Opinion
Data crunch: Small schemes, small problems?
In general, the story of defined benefit pensions in the UK is that smaller schemes started to close to new members and then to future accrual much earlier than larger ones.
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OpinionData crunch: Scale of UK institutional market eases Brexit fears
The Brexit vote raises many concerns in the investment world. UK institutional investors may be worried that asset managers may move their teams out of the UK, thus potentially reducing client service and investment innovation.
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OpinionData crunch: The LGPS and cost efficiency
In 2015 the chancellor announced proposals to pool the assets of the 89 Local Government Pension Scheme funds across England and Wales into at least six “British Wealth Funds”, each with a minimum size of £25bn.
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OpinionData crunch: What is behind the growth in unconstrained fixed income?
As investors look for yield and interest rate protection, unconstrained fixed income is a category that has seen strong inflows in particular from institutional investors.
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Opinion
Data crunch: Growth and diversity define the smart beta market
The smart beta market has earlier origins, but it was in the 2000s when products emerged that targeted better risk-adjusted returns through analysis of correlations and covariance within portfolios.
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Opinion
Why the UK's standing in the European pensions market is so important
Looking across Europe is a thankless task in the pensions world, because the black and white pensions categorisation that works in the US and UK – defined contribution, defined benefit or final salary – does not work at all well in continental Europe.
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Opinion
Data crunch: Annuities market being reshaped, not destroyed
Providers are in talks with the Treasury over how to advance plans for a secondary annuities market.