The ITN final salary scheme has become the first pension administration client of Equiniti, formerly known as LloydsTSB Registrars.

A round of applause for Tim Hodgson, who single-handedly explained Watson Wyatt’s seismic shift of focus at a conference last week (see page 5), after his bosses’ enforced absence.

Two FTSE 100 companies have broken new ground by offloading risks from their defined benefit (DB) pension schemes to buyout firms.

A global insurer has claimed it has created the most comprehensive insurance policy for trustees so far.

Trustees of final salary schemes face an unstoppable momentum towards fiduciary management, Watson Wyatt has claimed.

SEI is talking to a leading employer over the prospect of taking on the deferred members of its defined contribution pension plan.

BDO Stoy Hayward has teamed up with Thomsons Online Benefits to offer individual financial advice to employees.
Under the new agreement, to be offered on a transparent fee basis, BDO Stoy Hayward will offer a range of services to employees who are clients of Thomson Online Benefits.
The service will include a range of options for investment advice, ranging from pensions through to personal investment planning.

Pension administrators are forming joint teams to pitch for the personal accounts administration contract, according to one of the main contenders.

More than half of UK pension schemes have a dedicated pensions website, according to results from the latest Capita Hartshead pensions admin survey.

The YMCA Pension and Assurance Plan has appointed Xafinity Consulting to deliver a communications improvement strategy.

Open market options (OMOs) should become the default practice for choosing an annuity, a leading investment provider has claimed.

Institutional investors buying eastern European equities are happily placing their assets into gambling, tobacco and firms linked to weapon production.

The aggregate funding position of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes has improved to a surplus of £30.3bn.
The surplus was the first in four months, but was smaller than the £88.3bn surplus in April last year, according to the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).
The deficits of all schemes was £55.5bn at the end of March 2008, compared to last year’s figure of £32.8bn.
The figures were calculated using data from the PPF 7800 schemes.

A new service to help pension funds ensure 130/30 fund managers offer value for money has been launched by manager evaluation firm Inalytics.

British workers no longer rely on the government to provide adequate provisions for their retirement, according to HSBC’s latest Future of Retirement report.

Risk-sharing pension arrangements could be wiped out by the recent proposed reforms to accounting standard IAS 19, according to Hewitt Associates.

The Pensions Regulator’s selection of the long cohort projection as a ‘trigger’ for further scrutiny will have unintended consequences, the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) has stated.

A number of local authorities are working with Hymans Robertson on a project that attempts to better address longevity risk within their

pension schemes.

Pension schemes have increased their life expectancy assumptions by an average of half a year during 2007, according to Mercer.

The increase in switches to alternative asset classes has been mapped by a survey of institutional investors by Mercer.

The recent revival in UK equities belies concerns over the future prospects for growth, according to a leading active equities manager.

Stock markets are too gloomy and obsessed by the macroeconomic threat of a weak US economy, according to Resolution Asset Management.

Pensions Week can finally reveal the winners of the 2008 PIPA awards, as announced during a glittering night out in London’s West End.

Longevity looks set to continue increasing year on year, but what can

pension funds do to protect their members from the dangers of living longer, ask David Ricketts and Tom Willetts.

The most interesting welfare reform announcement for a decade has just been made. Forget about all the welfare to work measures, stakeholder pensions, personal accounts and the like. Concentrate on the government’s consultation document on long-term care.

The problem has become such a pressing concern that the Pensions Regulator felt obliged to intervene. By David Johnson.

While personal accounts will aim to tackle the low levels of participation in pensions through better access, there are currently many people who have the option of a workplace scheme, but aren’t making

the most of it. By Joanne Segars.

Could ‘learned optimism’ transform the way managers view the markets, asks Tom Powdrill.

NAPF annual conference & exhibition 
Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre,
Glasgow,
October 8-10, 2008

Extinction
A headline in one of the Sunday broadsheets, last week, read as follows: ‘The ? of Britain are becoming ? every year, as native ? fail to reproduce and migrants don’t return.

As mentioned in the first part of this series, the key aim of the enhanced value transfer (ETV) exercise is to remove liabilities.

Transition management has long been one of the Cinderella areas of pension fund investing. However, the upheaval in markets since last August has given it a status not previously seen.

As the industry attempts to get to grips with the T-Charter, four transition management specialists offer their expertise on the subject to Alison Ebbage.

Transition management can no longer be labelled a basic service, as its continued expansion has nurtured a wide-ranging approach to investment, says David Goodman.

Watson Wyatt has appointed Adam Stevenson and Amy Bell to expand its defined contribution (DC) pension consulting team.