Im Jahr 2015 hat das oberste deutsche Finanzgericht (Bundesfinanzhof, BFH) die steuerlichen Behandlungen von Schweizer Pensionskassen und eine fast 10 Jahre lange Praxis der deutschen Finanzverwaltung auf den Kopf gestellt. Die Änderung wirkt sich sowohl für Beiträge in als auch für Leistungen aus einer Schweizer Pensionskasse aus. Business 24 gibt dazu einen Überblick.
International
Dutch government considers extending pension-fund recovery periods
Jetta Klijnsma, state secretary at the Dutch Social Affairs Ministry, has confirmed that the government plans to decide early next year whether to extend the 10-year recovery term for the country’s beleaguered pension funds.
In a letter to parliament, she said the decision would depend on schemes’ financial position at year-end, which is the criterion for rights cuts, as set out in the new financial assessment framework (nFTK).
Klijnsma warned that, based on the regulator’s Q3 funding estimates, 30 pension funds would be forced to discount pension rights – by more than 0.7 percentage points on average – for more than 2.1m participants and pensioners next year.
Current recovery rules dictate that pension funds must cut pension rights by a equal percentage annually over the next 10 years, with a view to achieving the required funding level of 125%.
Klijnsma, however, said the regulator had concluded that, by extending the recovery period by one year, 24 pension funds would have to implement a 0.4% discount on average for 2m participants, including 190,000 pensioners next year.
Under a 12-year improvement term, the necessary discount could be reduced to 0.4% at no more than 17 schemes.
UK pension funding position weakest in Europe
The level of underfunding in corporate pension funds is at its worst in North America, shows analysis by MSCI ESG Research.
The firm looked at the funded status of almost 5,300 companies that disclose details of their defined benefit funds, across North America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific and Japan. It analyzed the ratio of underfunded liabilities to annual revenues of the company.
North America’s underfunded ratio was 9.2% according to the analysis made in September. Europe came in second at 4.7%, followed by Japan at 3.7%, and Asia-Pacific at 1.8%.
For Western Europe, Denmark had the best ratio at an average of 2.1%. That compares with the worst underfunded companies, which reside in the U.K., with an average 7.8% underfunding. In North America, Canada’s 6.1% average underfunded ratio bettered the U.S.’s 10.3% average. In Asia-Pacific, Thailand-based companies showed the best average underfunded ratios, at 1.2%, compared with the worst in Singapore at an average 2.5%.
Compared with 2015 figures, the underfunded ratio increased across all four regions, with a few exceptions at country level. The ratio increased 21.7% in 2016 vs. 2015 in North America, 8.2% in Western Europe, and 41.1% in Asia-Pacific. For Japan, the underfunded ratio grew 5.7% over the year. Specific dates were not available.
MSCI analysed 5,296 companies from Europe, North America, Asia and Japan. In addition to breaking down the company results by country, MSCI also looked into results for each industry. Among 1,457 European companies in the sample, semiconductor firms, pharmaceutical companies and banks were among the worst ranked sectors.
MSCI also “flagged” companies that ranked in the weakest 20% of their industry peer groups. The UK had the highest proportion of its companies flagged as among the weakest – 38%.
Americans Are Dying Faster
The latest, best guesses for U.S. lifespans come from a study (PDF) released this month by the Society of Actuaries: The average 65-year-old American man should die a few months short of his 86th birthday, while the average 65-year-old woman gets an additional two years, barely missing age 88.
This new data turns out to be a disappointment. Over the past several years, the health of Americans has deteriorated—particularly that of middle-aged non-Hispanic whites. Among the culprits are drug overdoses, suicide, alcohol poisoning, and liver disease, according to a Princeton University study issued in December.
Partly as a result, the life expectancy for 65-year-olds is now six months shorter than in last year’s actuarial study. Longevity for younger Americans was also affected: A 25-year-old woman last year had a 50/50 chance of reaching age 90. This year, she is projected to fall about six months short. (The average 25-year-old man is expected to live to 86 years and 11 months, down from 87 years and 8 months in last year’s estimates.) Baby boomers, Generation X, and yes, millennials, are all doing worse.
How We Run Our Money: Unilever Dutch pension funds
The Netherlands has spent years debating how to modernise its solidarity-based occupational pension system. When a nationwide debate closed earlier this year, the government began contemplating reform. The revised model is likely to contain defined benefit (DB) blended with defined contribution (DC).
Dutch pension funds, meanwhile, have not been waiting around. Some have restructured in anticipation of a world where collective defined contribution (CDC), will become the norm.
Unilever is among the companies that have started the transition. After a consultation between stakeholders and the approval of a collective labour agreement at the end of 2014, the company closed its Dutch DB scheme, Progress, to new entrants as of April 2015. At the same time, a new pension scheme for Dutch employees, Forward, was set up.
Hedge Funds Haven’t Lost Appeal for Biggest Danish Pension Fund
As a number of prominent pension funds stop using external managers they say charge too much in exchange for paltry returns, the biggest pension fund in Denmark is bucking the trend and sticking with the hedge funds it uses.
“In our case, funds have played a small but a good part in our portfolio,” Carsten Stendevad, the chief executive officer of ATP, which oversees about $118 billion in assets, said in an interview in Copenhagen.
The comments stand out at a time when a number of other pension funds have questioned the sense of continuing to rely on hedge funds to generate extra returns. There are plenty of examples of prominent skeptics. Rhode Island’s $7.7 billion pension fund terminated investments in seven hedge funds, including Brevan Howard Asset Management and Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, it said earlier this month.
Harvard Called ‘Lazy, Fat, Stupid’ in Endowment Report Last Year
Harvard University’s money managers collected tens of millions in bonuses by exceeding “easy-to-beat” investment goals even as the college’s endowment languished, employees complained in an internal review.
The consulting firm McKinsey & Co., in a wide-ranging examination, zeroed in on the endowment’s benchmarks, or investment targets. Some of those surveyed said Harvard allowed a kind of grade inflation when it came to evaluating its money managers.
“This is the only place I’ve seen where people can negotiate the benchmark they get compensated on,” read a “representative quote» in the McKinsey report.
The McKinsey assessment offered an explanation of what it called the “performance paradox” at Harvard’s $35.7 billion endowment, the largest in higher education. Year after year, Harvard would report benchmark-beating performance while falling further behind rivals such as Yale, Princeton, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The April 2015 report, which has never been made public, spells out why the fund paid more than peers for lagging performance, as well as its management’s strategy for shifting course. Harvard said it has since revamped its compensation.
Deutsche beziehen 20 Jahre lang Rente
Wer heute in Deutschland in den Ruhestand geht, erhält rund 20 Jahre lang Rente. Damit sei die durchschnittliche Bezugsdauer der Altersrente in Deutschland innerhalb der vergangenen 40 Jahre um mehr als 40 Prozent gestiegen, teilte das Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung in Wiesbaden mit. Wer im Jahr 1970 in Rente gegangen ist, hat die Zahlung durchschnittlich 13,9 Jahre lang bekommen.
Dabei gibt es zwischen den Geschlechtern erhebliche Unterschiede: Bei Frauen ist die Dauer der Zahlungen seit den 70er Jahren von 16,3 auf 21,6 Jahre angestiegen, bei Männern im gleichen Zeitraum von 11,8 auf 18,4 Jahre. Entscheidender Grund dafür ist dem Forschungsinstitut zufolge die gestiegene Lebenserwartung der Deutschen.
Internationaler Vergleich der Vorsorgesysteme
Die Schweiz ist im Vergleich der Altersvorsorgesysteme in 27 ausgesuchten Ländern von Platz 4 auf Platz 6 abgestiegen. Spitzenreiter bleibt Dänemark, gefolgt von den Niederlanden und Australien. Die Schlusslichter im Ranking sind Indien, Japan und Argentinien. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt der „Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index 2016“. Dieser wurde vom Beratungsunternehmen Mercer bereits zum achten Mal in Kooperation mit dem Australian Centre for Financial Studies erstellt.
Die Studie untersucht und bewertet die Altersvorsorge verschiedener Länder hinsichtlich ihrer Angemessenheit, Nachhaltigkeit und Integrität. Dabei wurden neben den staatlichen Rentensystemen und der betrieblichen Altersversorgung auch private Vorsorgemassnahmen berücksichtigt. In diesem Jahr hat sich der Index vor allem mit den Auswirkungen der raschen Alterung der Bevölkerung sowie mit der Frage befasst, inwieweit die Rentensysteme der einzelnen Länder auf den damit einhergehenden, beträchtlichen finanziellen Druck vorbereitet sind.
Dänemark hat sich den Spitzenplatz erneut unter anderem durch die solide Finanzierung, das hohe Vermögens- und Beitragsniveau sowie ein gut reguliertes privates Vorsorgesystem gesichert (80.5 von 100 möglichen Punkten).
Das Schweizer Vorsorgesystem ist mit einem Gesamtindexwert von 68.6 von Rang 4 auf Rang 6 abgerutscht. Wesentliche Ursache ist der Rückgang der Nettoersatzrate, d.h. die Nettorente im Verhältnis zum Lebenseinkommen. Auch im Bereich „Nachhaltigkeit“ mussten Punktverluste in Kauf genommen werden, da bei steigender Lebenserwartung und gleichbleibendem Pensionierungsalter die Pensionierungsdauer zugenommen hat.
Weltweiter Rückgang der PK-Vermögen
Das Gesamtvermögen der weltweit 300 grössten Pensionsfonds und Pensionskassen ist zum ersten Mal seit dem Ausbruch der Finanzkrise wieder rückläufig. Wie aus einer gemeinsamen Studie von Willis Towers Watson und dem US-Finanz- und Wirtschaftsmagazin „Pensions & Investments“ hervorgeht, ging das Volumen im vergangenen Jahr um 3,4 Prozent auf 14,8 Billionen US-Dollar und damit etwa auf das Niveau von Ende 2013 zurück. Auch die Schweizer Pensionseinrichtungen verloren an Substanz und fielen im Ranking zurück.
Mit 128 Fonds und einem Anteil von rund 38 Prozent sind die USA unter den weltweit 300 grössten Pensionseinrichtungen am stärksten vertreten, gefolgt von Japan mit rund 12 Prozent und den Niederlanden mit knapp 7 Prozent. Die Schweiz ist mit neun Vorsorgeeinrichtungen vertreten. Auf sie entfallen 1,4 Prozent der Assets, angeführt von der Pensionskasse des Bundes Publica auf Platz 100 mit einem Vermögen von gut 36 Mrd. Dollar.
Die teilweise schlechtere Rangstellung der Schweizer Fonds im internationalen Vergleich widerspiegelt nicht nur die Bewegungen in den unterliegenden Märkten, sondern auch die Wertentwicklung des Schweizer Franken. Dieser Währungseffekt machte sich 2014 besonders bemerkbar. Während Wertschriften in lokaler Währung allgemein stark zulegten, verlor der Franken fast 12 Prozent an Wert gegenüber dem US-Dollar. Daher fielen die Schweizer Einrichtungen im Ranking zurück. 2015 spielte dieser Deviseneffekt kaum eine Rolle, als sich der Franken nur knapp 1 Prozent gegenüber dem US-Dollar abschwächte. Dementsprechend war die Rangstellung der Schweizer Einrichtungen im internationalen Vergleich im 2015 viel stabiler als im Vorjahr.
Insgesamt haben sich die 20 grössten Pensionskassen besser entwickelt als das Gesamtranking. Mit einem Minus von 2,2 Prozent im vergangenen Jahr waren ihre Verluste um knapp 1,2 Prozent geringer als der allgemeine Durchschnitt der Top-300. „Ein Unterscheidungsmerkmal der führenden Pensionseinrichtungen ist ihre schnelle Anpassungsfähigkeit und Bereitschaft, First-Mover‘ zu sein“, meint Michael Valentine von WTW. Sie investierten in ein breites Spektrum von Renditequellen mit intelligenter Verwendung ihres Fee-Budgets, um das Maximum auszuschöpfen. „Die Vorsorgeeinrichtungen zahlen niedrige Kosten für passiv gemanagte Fonds und nutzen ein teureres aktives Management nur, wenn sie von einer Überrendite überzeugt sind“, sagt Valentine.
Canada’s biggest pension plans – the new ‘masters of the universe’
Canada’s eight largest public pension funds, which collectively manage net assets worth more than $1 trillion, have acquired so much heft in the past decade that they are being lauded in international financial circles as the new “masters of the universe.” Their clout has caught the attention of major Wall Street investment firms angling for their business, as well as institutional investors around the world that are emulating their investing model.
Sweden’s $34 Billion Pension Fund Can’t Be Happier Out of Bonds
AP7, one of Sweden’s five state pension funds, has less than 8 percent of its investments in bonds, and holds a very short duration of about two years. Pension funds across the OECD last year held on average more than 50 percent of their portfolios in bonds, according to a study released in June. That’s becoming costly in a world dominated by negative interest rates.
AP7 manages two funds, a 281 billion-krona stock fund and a 23 billion-krona fixed-income fund. Over the past two years, the stock fund has returned 10 percent on average, while the bonds has gained 1.4 percent.
UK working to get pension funds to finance infrastructure
Britain’s government is working to find ways to get domestic pension funds to invest in new nuclear power, rail and broadband projects ahead of a mid-year budget statement next month, the Sunday Telegraph reported late on Saturday.
The newspaper cited a government source as saying the projects would offer funds a higher return than standard government bonds, and that Britain’s finance ministry would consider underwriting some of the initial risk of projects. «If you’ve got a long-term infrastructure need why wouldn’t we be looking to put sensible money into that,» the source was quoted as saying.
«Pension funds need to invest their money, they don’t want it sitting in cash or government bonds. If you can put it into something that can get them a decent return, that is far better,» the source said.
Harvard Does a Trade You Should Never Make
The Harvard Management Co., which oversees Harvard University’s endowment and other investments, just released its 2016 annual report. It’s grim reading: The fund had a negative return of 2 percent and was worth about $2 billion less than a year earlier, underperforming its benchmarks by a significant margin.
At $35.7 billion, the university’s endowment is the biggest in the world. And let’s get it out of the way quickly — anyone can have a bad year. But here’s what should be of greater concern to alums and donors: the processes that the university and the management company use to look after this huge pile of money.
UK: Pension deficits reach a record £459bn
Britain’s generous defined benefit pensions have plumbed further depths during August, reaching another record-breaking deficit of £459.4bn as the scramble for bond assets and the interest rate cut sent their liabilities soaring.
The remaining 6,000 defined benefit schemes can now meet just 76.1pc of their obligations to pensioners, according to the sums used by the Pension Protection Fund, which rescues ailing schemes. This is the worst funding ratio since the PPF started publishing figures in 2006.
A rush for safe-haven bonds around the world has sent the yields on sovereign bonds through the floor – meaning a fall in the regular income that pension funds use to pay their retirees their defined benefits, sometimes known as final salary pensions. The Bank of England’s rate cut to 0.25pc has worsened the shortfall.