Institutional investor Portfolio Management Flashcards
common charactiertics
- scale: asset size AUM
- LT investment horizon
- regulatory framework
- Governance framework
- principle-agent issue
IPS include:
- return: specific, clearly defined, actuarially based, total return focus
- risk:
more objective using established risk measures and formal governance structures to control risk;
greater asset base may allow greater risk to be undertaken - constraint
- liquidity
specific liability steam that is formally managed
plan sponsor is source of regular and extraordinary funding - time horizon:
perpetual/very long
assuming enrollment to new participants remains open - tax
tax-exempt - legal/regulatory
highly regulated by ERISA at the federal level
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund
- passively agreed allocation to public equity & bonds (with traditional 60/40% base allocation )
- little or no exposure to alternative asset
- tight tracking error limits
adv:
low cost and fees
easy for board to comprehend
disadvantage:
no opportunity for outperformance of markets
Yale University endowment
external managed asset
- high allocation to alternatives
- significant active management
- externally managed assets
adv: potential for outperformance of market
disadvantage:
- difficult for small institutions without expertise in alternatives
- may also be difficult for large managers due to capacity issue of external mangers
- high fees/ costs
Canada Pension Fund
internal managed asset
- high allocation to alternative
- significant active management
- internally managed assets
- use a reference portfolio of passive public assets as benchmark that can be easily understand
adv:
- potential for outperformance of market and development of internal capacities
disadvantage:
- potentially expensive and difficult to manage
LDI liability driven
AA:
focus is on maximizing expected surplus
(A-L) return and managing surplus volatility
adv:
explicitly recognizes liabilities as part of inv. process
disadvantage:
certain risk of liability (longevity) are difficult to hedge
DB face mortality/longevity risk
- risk of general increase in life expectancy faced by sponsor
inv. objective:
achieve a target return over a specified LT horizon which assuming a level of risk that is consistent with meeting its contractual liabilities
2rd objective:
minimize PV of cash contributions, the sponsor will be required to provide
DC face longevity risk by employee
- older participant will have shorter investment horizon
- life-cycle option
participant-switching option ( move to more conservative AA as aging)
participant/ cohort option (pooling participant with other investment)
objective:
primary: prudently grow assets to meet spending needs in retirement
2rd: to outperform the passive asset class returns of the default option’s strategic asset allocation
Funded ratio =
fv of pa/ pv of pbo
factor increase liability
- service/tenure
- salary
- longevity
- additional/ matching contribution
factor decrease liability
- increase in discount rate
- return expectation
factor increase risk tolerance
- increase in investment horizon
- plan close to new participants
- fund status surplus
- low debt ratio
- high profitability
- large size of plan
- young workforce
- low correlation with operation result
risk exposure of Pension plan
the lower correlation of sponsor operating results and the returns of pension assets, the greater the risk tolerance of plan
the low correlation implies that in times of plan underperformance, the sponsor is likely to be more profitable and able to increase plan contributions
provision for early retirement
imply a low risk tolerance as the shorter investment horizon means the plan has less time to recover from short-term losses
liquidity need higher when
- the proportion of retired lives in the plan is higher
- the workforce of the employer is older since the time to pay benefits will be shorter
- plan has higher fund status, since this will likely lead to lower sponsor contributions and more benefits part will need to be met from existing plan asset
- the plan participants have the ability to switch or withdraw from the plan, an event that usually triggers payment to participants