Canadian institutions are at the forefront of a growing move by institutions worldwide to integrate exchange-traded funds (ETFs) into their portfolios, according to the 2017 Canadian Exchange-Traded Funds Study, recently released by Greenwich Associates. In fact, the 52 Canadian institutions that participated in the study currently allocate an average 18.8% of their total assets to …
Institutional investors are moving in increasing numbers into fixed-income exchange-traded funds (ETFs), according to a recently released Greenwich Associates study, ETFs: Valuable Versatility in a Newly Volatile Market. The heightened demand for these products is derived from insufficient liquidity in the fixed-income market as well as institutional portfolios adjusting to an environment of rising interest rates, …
Staff members of the approximately $4.5 billion Fire & Police Pension Association of Colorado (FPPA) are feeling pretty good about themselves currently. Why? In 2009, an informal level of questioning, second-guessing and hypothesizing among board and staff members regarding the fund’s longstanding, heavily-consultant-driven asset manager hiring process coalesced into formal action to change that process …
The Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS) has appointed Crystal Wessing as Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the $8.5 billion Jefferson City-based retirement fund, according to a released statement from MOSERS. Separately, the system is also now in the final phase of a recruitment effort for a new executive director, which it expects …
The Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS) has hired Verus Investments as a Board Investment Consultant (BIC) to provide investment advisory and oversight services directly to its Board of Trustees. MOSERS has asked the BIC to present a proposed asset allocation/policy portfolio to the fund’s investment committee, which the fund says Verus has done. According …
Verus Investments, which last year kicked-off an effort to include more emerging and environmental, social and governance (ESG) managers on its approved-manager list, is bringing more thought to how it assists clients in identifying emerging managers and implementing their ESG mission-related initiatives, according to Eileen Neill, a managing director and senior consultant with the firm. …
The world’s defined-benefit (DB) pension funds are moving toward two very different futures, according to a recent report from BlackRock, based on a survey conducted for it by the Economist Intelligence Unit, titled Common Challenges, Diverging Paths: winding down and building up in global defined benefit pension. The report, which secures responses from 300 funds …
Having achieved compliance with CFA Institute’s Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPs) for the first time, for the year ending June 30, 2017, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) hopes its adoption of the standards will spur other U.S. state pension plans to follow suit. “One of the reasons this is a big deal is …
