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We propose target date funds modified to exploit stock return predictability driven by the variance risk premium. The portfolio rule of these tactical target date funds (TTDFs) is extremely simplified relative to the optimal one, making it easy to implement and to communicate to investors. We show that saving for retirement in TTDFs generates economically large welfare gains, even after we introduce turnover restrictions and transaction costs, and after taking into account parameter uncertainty. This predictability also appears to be uncorrelated with individual household risk, suggesting that households are in a prime position to exploit it. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance.

Demographic changes increase the necessity to base the pension system more and more on the second and the third pillar, namely the occupational and private pension plans; this paper deals with Target Date Funds (TDFs), which are a typical investment opportunity for occupational pension planners. TDFs are usually identified with a decreasing fraction of wealth invested in equity (a so-called glide path) as retirement comes closer, i.e., wealth is invested more risky the younger the saver is. We investigate whether this is actually optimal in the presence of non-tradable income risk in a stochastic volatility environment. The retirement planning procedure is formulated as a stochastic optimization problem. We find it is the (random) contributions that induce the optimal path exhibiting a glide path structure, both in the constant and stochastic volatility environment. Moreover, the initial wealth and the initial contribution made to a retirement account strongly influence the fractional amount of wealth to be invested in risky assets. The risk aversion of an individual mainly determines the steepness of the glide path.

This article presents a thorough evaluation of target date funds for the period 2010–2020. Target date funds have grown enormously in assets, reaching $1.4 trillion at the end of 2019, and account for approximately 24% of all assets in 401(k) accounts. We report on the results of a style analysis evaluation of TDFs that determines their effective asset allocation. It examines both the constant in the style analysis regressions and resulting Sharpe ratios, which reflect the over- or under-performance of the funds relative to a passive benchmark with the same asset allocation. Lower cost TDFs tend to match the benchmark returns, while higher cost TDFs deviate from them considerably. We examine how TDFs performed in the stock market crash between February 19 and March 23, 2020, during which five-week period broad market averages fell by about one-third. We find that the value of long-dated TDFs (those with a target date of 2045 and beyond) fell by between 30% and 35%, while the 2025 funds, designed for people roughly 60 years old, lost between 20% and 25% of their value. We find that past performance only weakly influences future expected performance. As with equity funds in general in this period, TDFs with actively managed ingredient funds, on average, trailed the performance of their cheaper passively managed counterparts. TOPICS:Pension funds, portfolio theory, risk management, performance measurement Key Findings ▪ Even near term TDFs have considerable equity exposure. For instance, 2025 TDFs lost between 20 and 25% of their value in the five weeks between February 19 and March 23, 2020. Many longer horizon TDFs did no better than pure equity funds in this period. ▪ 75% of actively managed TDFs failed to do as well as the best fitting set of reference ETFs. ▪ Past performance is only a weak predictor of future performance for TDFs. An extra 1% per year return in 2010–14 period only increases the expected return in 2015–19 by 9 basis points per year.

The benefit of investment advice depends on the quality of advice and the investor's counterfactual portfolio. We use changes in the Oregon University System Optional Retirement Plan to highlight the impact of plan design on the counterfactual portfolios of advice seekers. When brokers are available and target date funds (TDFs) are not, brokers help participants with high predicted demand for advice bear market risk, but they recommend higher-commission options. When brokers are removed and TDFs are added, new high-predicted-demand participants primarily invest in TDFs, which offer similar market risk but higher Sharpe ratios than the broker-advised portfolios within our sample.

By analyzing the portfolio allocations of target date funds (TDFs), we document that the observed durations of TDF portfolios are inconsistent with the durations predicted by classical portfolio theory. We call this stylized fact the duration puzzle. We investigate to what extent several extensions of classical portfolio theory can explain the duration puzzle. More specifically, we consider the impact of human capital, inflation risk, and portfolio restrictions on the duration of the optimal portfolio. We find that it is difficult to explain the duration puzzle, especially for individuals aged between 35 and 65 years.

This paper quantifies the business cycle effects and distributional implications of pension fund restoration policy after the economy has been hit by a financial shock. We extend a canonical New-Keynesian dynamic general equilibrium model with a tractable demographic structure and a pension fund. Numerical simulations show that economies with pension funds that primarily write off accumulated pension wealth to restore financial adequacy behave similarly to an economy without a pension fund. Significant deviations from laissez-faire arise when the pension fund increases the pension fund contribution rate to close the funding gap or postpones the closure of the funding gap. At a cost of significantly distorting aggregate labour supply and output, the pension fund can shelter the group of retirees from unanticipated shocks by guaranteeing the value of their accumulated pension wealth. A defined benefit pension fund can be welfare improving to the group of agents that is already born in the period the financial shock hits. However, since pension funding gaps are typically closed over an extended period of time, a part of the welfare gains to currently alive agents comes at the expense of future, currently unborn, generations.

Little is known about whether employee retirement saving patterns change when public sector employers implement Target Date Funds (TDFs) as the default plan investment. We use administrative and survey data from a large government entity to track participation, contributions, and asset allocation impacts of TDF introduction. We show that those mapped into TDFs did not alter their holdings so that the reform resulted in higher equity shares, especially for women, younger workers, and low‐seniority employees. The least risk‐tolerant and financially literate employees held 12 percentage points more equity than previously. Moreover, defaulting public employees into TDF had a profoundly sticky effect on their subsequent investment behavior.

We study optimal life-cycle portfolio allocation and its application to target-date fund (TDF) design. We show that optimal TDF allocation must be explicitly linked to a savings rate; for example, a higher savings rate generating higher financial wealth accumulation should necessarily come with a more conservative TDF. Further, we quantify the extent to which accumulated wealth, the investing environment, and participant characteristics affect TDF allocations and compare the resulting optimal allocations against the observed universe of US TDF products. Plan sponsors and asset managers can use these findings to improve TDF selection and design. Key Findings ▪ We quantify how observed savings rates in 401k plans affect a TDF’s optimal allocation. Using a state-of-the-art life-cycle academic model, we find strong effects: for a moderately risk-averse participant, a halving in savings rate from 10% to 5% increases its optimal equity allocation by 10%–15%. ▪ We document the effects of real-life variations in other key determinants of TDF optimal allocations: participant’s risk aversion, relation between wages and equity returns, outside retirement income, start of savings, and expected returns. We measure the resulting wealth and consumption experience at and in retirement. ▪ We set these optimal glide paths against the glide paths pursued by US TDF mutual funds and observe a much narrower range for the observed ones, thus leaving some constituencies without an appropriate investment choice. Further, the optimal glide paths tend to slow the equity decline as they approach retirement; most observed ones do the opposite.

Given any set of exogenously provided efficient portfolios, we develop a dynamic programming algorithm that constructs an optimal portfolio trading strategy to maximize the probability of attaining an investor’s specified goal wealth at the end of a designated timeframe. Our algorithm can also accommodate periodic infusions or withdrawals of any size with no degradation in runtime performance. We explore how the terminal wealth distribution is sensitive to restrictions on the segment of the portfolio’s efficient frontier made available to the investor. Because our algorithm’s optimal strategy is on the efficient frontier, allowed to depend on the investor’s wealth, and allowed to depend on the investor’s individual goals and specifications, we show that it soundly beats the performance of target date funds for attaining investors’ goals. These optimal goals-based wealth management strategies are useful for modern day FinTech offerings, both advisor-driven or robo-driven.

In this paper we consider the problem of choosing the optimal pension fund in the second pillar of Lithuanian pension system by providing some guidelines to individuals with defined contribution pension plans. A multistage risk-averse stochastic optimization model is proposed that can be used to plan a long-term pension accrual under two different cases: minimum and maximum accumulation plans as possible options in the system. The investment strategy of personal savings is based on the optimal solutions over possible scenario realizations generated for a particular participant. The concept of the risk-averse decision-maker is implemented by choosing the conditional value at risk as the risk measure defined by a nested formulation that guarantees the time consistency in the multistage model. The paper focuses on three important decision-making moments corresponding to the duration of periods to be modelled. The first period is a short-term accumulation, while the second period is a long-term accumulation with possibly high deviation of objective function value. The third period is designed to implement the concept of target date fund in the second pillar pension scheme as the subsequent need to protect against potential losses at risky pension funds. The experimental findings of this research provide insights for individuals as decision-makers to select pension funds, as well as for policy-makers by revealing the vulnerability of pension system.

The problem of multistage allocation is solved using the Target Date Fund (TDF) strategy subject to a set of restrictions which model the latest regulatory framework of the Mexican pension system. The investment trajectory or glide-path for a representative set of 14 assets of heterogeneous characteristics is studied during a 161 quarters long horizon. The expected returns are estimated by the GARCH(1,1), EGARCH(1,1), GJR-GARCH(1,1) models, and a stationary block bootstrap model is used as a benchmark for comparison. A fixed historical covariance matrix and a multi-period estimation of DCC-GARCH(1,1) are also considered as inputs of the objective function. Forecasts are evaluated through their asymmetric dependencies as quantified by the transfer entropy measure. In general, we find very similar glide-paths so that the overall structure of the investment is maintained and does not rely on the particular forecasting model. However, the GARCH(1,1) under a fixed historical covariance matrix exhibits the highest Sharpe ratio and in this sense represents the best trade-off between wealth and risk. As expected, the initial stages of the obtained glide-paths are initially dominated by risky assets and gradually transition into bonds towards the end oof the trajectory. Overall, the methodology proposed here is computationally efficient and displays the desired properties of a TDF strategy in realistic settings.

The bulk of 401(k) assets were invested in stocks. On average, at year-end 2018, 63 percent of 401(k) participants’ assets were invested in equity securities through equity funds, the equity portion of balanced funds, and company stock. Twenty-eight percent of assets were in fixed-income securities such as stable value investments, bond funds, money funds, and the fixed-income portion of balanced funds. More 401(k) plan participants held equities at year-end 2018 than before the financial market crisis (year-end 2007), and most had the majority of their accounts invested in equities. For example, about three-quarters of participants in their twenties had more than 80 percent of their 401(k) plan accounts invested in equities at year-end 2018, up from less than half of participants in their twenties at year-end 2007. Overall, more than 90 percent of 401(k) participants had at least some investment in equities at year-end 2018. More than three-quarters of 401(k) plans, covering more than three-quarters of 401(k) plan participants, included target date funds in their investment lineup at year-end 2018. At year-end 2018, 27 percent of the assets in the EBRI/ICI 401(k) database were invested in target date funds and more than half of 401(k) participants in the database held target date funds. Also known as lifecycle funds, these funds are designed to offer a diversified portfolio that automatically rebalances to be more focused on income over time. In an ongoing collaborative effort, the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and the Investment Company Institute (ICI) collect annual data on millions of 401(k) plan participants as a means to examine how these participants manage their 401(k) plan accounts. This report is an update of EBRI and ICI’s ongoing research into 401(k) plan participants’ activity through year-end 2018. The report is divided into four sections: the first describes the EBRI/ICI 401(k) database; the second presents a snapshot of participant account balances at year-end 2018; the third looks at participants’ asset allocations, including analysis of 401(k) participants’ use of target date, or lifecycle, funds; and the fourth focuses on participants’ 401(k) loan activity.

This paper considers investors who are looking to maximize their probability of remaining solvent throughout their lifetime by using an algorithm that aims to optimize their investment allocation strategy and optimize their tax strategy for withdrawal allocations between tax deferred accounts (TDAs), Roth accounts, and taxable stock and bond accounts. This optimization works with stochastic investment returns and stochastic mortality, extending and combining different investment and tax-efficiency paradigms. We find that optimizing the investment strategy has a much larger impact on the investor remaining solvent than optimizing the tax strategy. This result is key to effectively optimizing both strategies simultaneously. This optimized investment strategy soundly beats a standard target date fund strategy, and the novel optimized tax strategy displays optimal desired properties suggested by non-stochastic tax optimization research.

We document a reduction in both the level and cross-sectional dispersion of systematic risk in the target-date fund (TDF) market after 2008, which resulted in better performance of TDFs during the COVID-19 selloff compared to the 2008 selloff and a reduction in TDF return dispersion. We find that the shift is more pronounced in close-to-retirement funds and driven by the TDF series investing more in equities in the early period, consistent with TDFs catering to the market demand for lower risk exposure after the 2008 crisis. In addition, TDF systematic risk shifters do not exhibit more idiosyncratic risk-taking.

The rise of Target Date Funds (TDFs) has moved a significant share of retail investors into contrarian trading strategies that rebalance between stocks and bonds so as to maintain age-appropriate portfolio shares. We show that i) TDFs actively rebalance within a few months following differential asset-class returns to maintain stable portfolio shares, ii), this rebalancing drives contrarian rebalancing flows across funds held by TDFs, iii) investors do not move funds into or out of TDFs to offset these flows, and iv) these flows impact the prices of stocks. Across otherwise similar stocks, those with higher (indirect) TDF ownership experience lower returns after higher market-wide performance, a results that holds when looking only at variation in TDF ownership driven by S&P index inclusion. Consistent with this price impact, the stock market exhibits more reversion at the monthly frequency during the recent TDF era. Together, our results suggest that continued growth in TDFs may affect return dynamics and the relation between stock and bond returns.

We analyze the behavior of 401(k) plan participants during the first quarter of 2020, when COVID-19 generated historic volatility, large negative returns, and significant unemployment. Only 2.1% of participants invested in TDFs made any changes to their portfolios, with even lower rates of change among those defaulted into robo-advised managed accounts, suggesting that delegation can decrease the likelihood of portfolio mistakes by less sophisticated participants. While 16.6% of non-delegated participants made portfolio changes, these changes were more likely among more sophisticated participants and appear not to have reduced participants’ quarterly returns. Consistent with liquidity constraints, however, withdrawals spike following job loss.

Target date funds in corporate retirement plans grew from $5B in 2000 to $734B in 2018, partly because federal regulation sanctioned these as default investments in automatic enrollment plans. We show that adopters delegated pension investment decisions to fund managers selected by plan sponsors. Including these funds in retirement saving menus raised equity shares, boosted bond exposures, curtailed cash/company stock holdings, and reduced idiosyncratic risk. The adoption of low-cost target date funds may enhance retirement wealth by as much as 50 percent over a 30-year horizon.

There is a looming retirement crisis, as individuals are increasingly being asked to take responsibility for their own retirement planning and a majority of these individuals are financially unsophisticated. They cannot perform basic compounding calculations and do not understand the impact of inflation, both critical aspects of retirement planning. Yet, these individuals are being tasked with the responsibility for three complex, interconnected decisions: how much to save, how to invest (with many additional decisions), and how to decumulate one’s portfolio at retirement. Compounding these challenges, current financial instruments and products (e.g. T-Bills, TIPs, or Target Date Funds) are risky because they focus on the wrong goal - wealth at retirement, as opposed to how much retirement income can be guaranteed to support pre-retirement standard-of-living. Moreover, annuities are complex, costly, and illiquid and seldom used. Without financial innovation and a change in the metric for measuring retirement success, many individuals will retire poor – a financially and socially undesirable outcome for any country. This paper presents an easy, quick and efficient solution for countries to address all these challenges and improve retirement security by creating and issuing an innovative new bond – SeLFIES (Standard-of-Living indexed, Forward-starting, Income-only Securities). The SeLFIES bond is a single, liquid, low-cost, low-risk instrument, easy-to-understand for even the most financially unsophisticated individual, because it embeds accumulation, decumulation, compounding and inflation-adjustments. SeLFIES is good for governments too, as the bond lowers the risk of individuals retiring poor, improves balance sheet management, and funds infrastructure. The paper also discusses key design aspects of SeLFIES to show how they can ensure longevity risk protection and hedge standard-of-living risk, a key unmanaged risk globally today. Additionally, the paper by concludes by demonstrating the universality of the SeLFIES design as well as by showing how it serves a useful purpose by becoming the “currency of retirement.”

Mutual fund is a popular investment vehicle for investors. Investors usually judge fund manager performance relative to target benchmarks. Fund managers, on the other hand, are interested in knowing how/why they perform well or poorly relative to their peers in different aspects of fund management as well. To acquire more insights about this issue and design a comprehensive performance measure, fund management function is conceptualised as a three-stage production process. To assess overall and stage-level performance, a network data envelopment analysis model is developed. The stage-level processes are deemed to operate under two different environmental conditions—levels of risk exposure. Operation under different levels of risk exposure is modelled through conditions imposed on the intermediate measures. A new index proposed to assess linkage performance is demonstrated empirically to improve discriminatory power of performance. Further applications of the proposed model are discussed.

The use of target date funds (TDFs) as default options in 401(k) plans increased sharply following the Pension Protection Act of 2006. We document large differences in the realized returns and ex ante risk profiles of TDFs with similar target retirement dates. Analyzing fund-level data, we find evidence that this heterogeneity reflects strategic risk-taking by families with low market share, especially those entering the TDF market after 2006. Analyzing plan-level data, we find little evidence that 401(k) plan sponsors consider, to any economically meaningful degree, the risk profiles of their firms when choosing among TDFs. Received June 13, 2013; editorial decision March 20, 2018 by Editor Laura Starks. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

In over-the-counter markets, many options on a defaultable instrument are subject to default risks stemming from the possibility that the option writer may not carry out its contractual obligations. In this study, we examine the valuation of dynamic fund protection with an issuer’s credit risk. By using double Mellin transforms and the method of images, we obtain the closed-form solution of vulnerable dynamic fund protection. Moreover, we analyze the value of dynamic fund protection under the default risk of firms with respect to the model parameters and demonstrate that our closed-form solution has been derived accurately and efficiently by comparing it with the solution from the Monte-Carlo simulation.

We extend Cass and Stiglitz's analysis of preference-based mutual fund separation. We provide a complete characterization of the general K-fund separation. We show that some instances of separation with many funds can be constructed by adding inverse marginal utility functions having separation with one or a few funds. We also show that there is money separation (in which we can choose the riskless asset as one of the funds) if and only if there is a fund (which may or may not be the riskless asset) with a constant allocation as wealth changes. In general, we do not know how to write the separating utility functions in closed form, but we can do so in the special case of SAHARA utility defined by Chen et al. and for a new class of GOBI preferences introduced here.

We mainly develop a model measuring the optimal effort of a risk-neutral hedge fund manager in a continuous-time framework. The fund manager chooses the optimal effort to maximize the present value of total fees and reduce liquidation risks, trading off extra return benefits against the cost of the effort. We find that the manager's effort depends on the ratio between the fund's assets under management (AUM) and the high-water mark (HWM), and endogenous fund liquidation has key influence on the dynamics of the effort. Our calibration suggests that when the fund is close to liquidation, the manager exerts greatest effort. The more distant the fund value is from the liquidation boundary, the less effort the manager chooses to make; when the fund value is approaching the HWM, the manager's optimal effort still decreases, but the rate of decline becomes far slower. The optimal effort contributes to both increasing the likelihood of survival for the fund and preserving the fund's going-concern value. A growth of degree of the effort cost, volatility of the AUM, exogenous liquidation probability or endogenous liquidation boundary decreases the optimal effort. We also find empirical evidence that may support our theoretical conclusion.

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is important to achieve a sustainable recycling-oriented circular economy system because EPR can guarantee that recycling companies obtain average profit margins. A unique Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) fund system was implemented in China in 2012. However, the fund system encountered a dilemma: it cannot pay for itself. A Fund Balance Analysis Model is built to estimate the accumulated government fund deficit. The result shows that the deficit will grow to $33.0 billion from 2012 to 2030. A new fund operation mode, which adds the consumer pay part, is established in this study. This mode uses 5 years as a fund adjustment time interval and the period of 2015–2050 is divided into 7 intervals. According to the time sequence, a gradually increasing fund collection standard, which is easy for consumers to adopt, is determined to achieve a sustainable fund system. Given that the Electrical and Electronic Equipment sales quantity in China is obviously higher than the formally dismantled WEEE in recent years, the funds collected will be higher than subsidies, and a fund pool will be formed in the early stage. This fund pool plays an important role in the establishment of sustainable fund operations as it will continue to provide a capital source for the fund appreciation in the ensuing years. The incentive problem of eco-design can be easily solved by this new mode because China's government plays a strong role in the WEEE fund operation and can directly reward the producers that meet the eco-design requirements. Additionally, this mode is very convenient for addressing external factors, such as the eco-design and trans-boundary trade, with a few changes in the fund collection standard.

This paper is the first DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) evaluation of the efficiency of a sample of mutual fund companies in a large Euro fund industry, i.e. Spain. Our novel network model links the efficiency of the core activities (portfolio management and marketing/distribution) of a mutual fund company to the efficiency of its operational management function. Our results highlight the important networking effects at the marketing stage and question the prime role of portfolio management skills in the overall efficiency of a mutual fund company. The evaluation of robust efficiency clusters indicates that the efficiency rankings obtained with our network model persist significantly along our sample period. Finally, the application of the SBM (Slacks-Based Measure) Variation III to our network model allows us to identify a large number of globally inefficient but locally efficient companies with reference to competitors with similar management resources.

This study aims to reconstruct the performance assessment model on Pension Fund by modifying Baldrige Assessment method that is adjusted to the conditions in Dana Pensiun A (Pension Fund A) in order to realize Good Pension Fund Governance. This study design uses case study analysis. The research sites were conducted in Dana Pensiun A. The informants in the study included the employer, supervisory board, pension fund management, active and passive pension fund participant as well as financial services authority elements as the regulator. The result of this research is a construction of a comprehensive and profound retirement performance assessment model with attention to aspects of growth and fair distribution. The model includes the parameters of leadership, strategic planning, stakeholders focus, measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, workforce focus, standard operational procedure focus, result, just and fair distribution of wealth and power

We provide novel evidence on the role of ambiguity aversion in determining the response of mutual fund investors to fund performance. Our analysis is motivated by theoretical models of decision making by ambiguity-averse investors. A key implication of the models is that when investors face information signals of uncertain quality, they place a greater weight on the worst signal. We find strong empirical support for this prediction in the form of heightened sensitivity of investor fund flows to the worst performance measure across multiple horizons. This effect is particularly pronounced for retail funds in contrast to institutional funds. This paper was accepted by Neng Wang, finance.

This paper examines the relationship between mutual fund managers’ past professional backgrounds and their portfolio performance, using Chinese mutual fund data from 2003 to 2016. We focus on managers with prior work experience either as industry analysts or as macro analysts, the two most common career paths for Chinese fund managers. We hypothesize that managers who worked as industry analysts exhibit superior stock-picking skills, while managers with a background as macro analysts are more skillful in timing the market. These hypotheses are supported by the data, even after controlling for observable fund and manager characteristics. Bootstrap analyses suggest that the significant difference in performance between these two types of managers cannot be attributed purely to luck.

This paper examines the cross-sectional relation between the systemic risk contribution of hedge funds and hedge fund returns. Measuring the systemic risk of an individual hedge fund by using the marginal expected shortfall (MES), we find evidence for a positive and statistically significant relation between systemic risk and hedge fund returns. The riskadjusted return of a hedge fund portfolio with a high systemic risk is 0.64% per month higher than for one with a low systemic risk during 1994–2012, while negative performance is observed during crisis periods. The relation between systemic risk and hedge fund returns holds for both live and defunct funds. Moreover, the relation holds even after controlling for a large set of fund characteristics. Hence, systemic risk is a powerful determinant of crosssectional variations in hedge fund returns. Because hedge funds with a high systemic risk contribution tend to have high downside beta, these results imply that investors are willing to demand a premium to carry tail risk during systemic events. JEL classification: G10, G11, G23, G28, C13.

Alpha is a key indicator of mutual fund performance. It is equal to fund’s risk-adjusted return in excess of a benchmark index. We find that Norwegian mutual fund investors cannot always rely on alpha based on the fund-selected benchmark index, to differentiate fund quality. Many managers appear to pick benchmarks strategically and/or adjust their portfolios in a way that maximizes alpha. Our analysis sharpens previous studies of the US data, where only a few alternative benchmarks were considered based on a coarse classification of fund investment objectives and not on actual fund-selected benchmarks. The results are economically important. Compared to the best-fit alpha, alpha relative to the benchmark that best describes fund returns, alpha of an average equity fund appears to be 0,45 % higher per year. Among equity funds that “exaggerate” their alpha, the number is 1,83 %. We also find that the best-fit alpha, and not the fund’s official alpha, has a strong statistical association with fund closing decisions. Taken together, we find these results to be strong circumstantial evidence of strategic benchmark picking.

This report examines the evaluation of capacity in an investment management context, outlining the key issues and various methods of analysis. We address the following question: “how large can a fund get before it is unable to create additional value for its investors?” In doing so, we frame the discussion under the assumption that an active fund forms a portfolio based on a particular investment ‘signal’, which should be read as a general term for the information or process by which investment opportunities are identified. A signal may comprise indicators, forecasts, viewpoints, a strategy, and so on. The issue being considered is how far a signal can be leveraged through additional funds under management (FUM), before management should consider either closing the fund to new money, or changing the signal and thus the investment process.

This study aims to find an efficient and fair policy on using a recycling fund in an uncertain environment. After over a decade's experience on E-waste management, the current policy of Taiwan's Recycling Fund Management Board (RFMB) is reviewed in search of a better policy. RFBM's environmental goal is to maximize the recycling rate with an uncertain fund. The study evaluates the fund on two models, yearly balance and multi-period, and illustrates the concept of two fund settings, offset yearly and earmarked. We generate four scenarios covering the estimated fund incomes in future years, using waste printers as an example in the analysis. The results herein show that the multi-period model provides more benefits than the yearly balance model for any situation under the four scenarios, and that the earmarked setting has an edge over the offset yearly setting in the above situations. We recommend that RFMB switch its fund setting into an earmarked fund and use the multi-period model, as it can obtain more option values against uncertainties in the long run. The finding on how to manage a recycling fund offers reference value for other countries adopting such a subsidy system for extended producer responsibility.

In this paper, we consider the portfolio optimization problem for a pension fund consisting of various government and corporate bonds. The aim of the problem is to maximize the fund’s cash position at the end of the time horizon, while allowing for the possibility of bond defaults. We model this problem as a stochastic discrete-time optimal control problem with a chance constraint that ensures all future outgoing commitments can be met with sufficiently high probability. We then introduce a corresponding deterministic formulation that is a conservative approximation of the original stochastic optimal control problem. This approximate problem can be solved using gradient-based optimization techniques. We conclude the paper with a simulation study.

In this paper, we first review some important aspects of asset allocation for some typical large Social Security Reserve Funds (SSRFs) in the world. Then we present the mean-variance model with CVaR constraints as asset allocation methodology. Concerning the real circumstance in China, we apply the model to pension fund asset allocation. The empirical results show that to maintain purchase power of pension fund, certain proportion should be invested in stocks as well as direct equity investments. We also find that time horizon significantly influence asset allocation of pension fund. If time horizon is longer, more allocations to stocks and equity investments help the pension fund to achieve better performance.

In the present study, we make an effort to enhance the practical advantages of the life-cycle pension model. We observe that previous studies are based on a “switching†approach, that is, on the assumption that when a pension fund member reaches a certain age, his accumulated savings are fully switched to another fund with a lower risk profile; we suggest an “accumulating†approach, according to which, at the same age, the member’s previously accumulated wealth continues to be invested in the same fund, while his new regular pension contributions start being directed to another (less risky) fund. We consider a hypothetical (average) Israeli employee, analyze two age-dependent life-cycle investment distributions of his pension savings, and perform a comparison between the two approaches to the life-cycle model by employing an estimation-based and a simulation-based technique. The results demonstrate that the “accumulating†approach provides: (i) higher estimated annualized real returns and real accumulated savings; (ii) significantly higher simulated mean and median values of real accumulated savings. Moreover, we document that, though the “accumulating†approach increases the standard deviation of total savings, it does not lead to critically low pension wealth levels even for relatively unfavorable sequences of financial assets’ returns. Therefore, we conclude that the “accumulating†approach to the life-cycle model has a potential significantly to increase pension fund members’ total accumulated wealth relatively to the common “switching†approach, without significantly increasing the members’ risk.

The introduction of the Directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFM Directive 2011/61/EU) in 2013 means a radical transformation of the EU regulatory landscape for the whole alternative investment fund industry. Taking into account the growing meaning of the alternative investment fund industry in Europe, the aim of the paper is to assess the impact the Directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMD) will have on the Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs) managing Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) in the EU. The research is based on the case of Malta, which is a quickly growing financial centre. The main findings are based on an analysis of questionnaire responses conducted with key players in the fund industry regulated and licensed by the Malta Financial Services Authority. This study provides an extensive analysis of the AIFMD and its impact on Malta’s financial service industry. It has highlighted various factors that will have a positive or negative impact on the industry resulting from the AIFMD. The paper provides recommendations for further development of the Maltese fund industry in the context of the AIFMD that can be partially applied to other fund domiciles., peer-reviewed

We develop a trade-level measure to evaluate fund managers’ efficiency in their buying and selling activities relative to the trades of other fund managers. We customize an additive Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to focus on risk-adjusted returns during different time periods as trade-level outcomes. The model does not consider any input–output process. Instead, it considers tradeoffs between multiple outcomes. We find that fund managers do not have symmetric ability in buying and selling. Some managers do well in buy transactions but not in sell transactions while others perform well in selling but not in buying. We also explore the determinants of fund managers’ trading performance. Compared to trade characteristics, portfolio characteristics have a greater influence in explaining fund managers’ relative trading efficiency.

Purpose To explain guidance from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Division of Investment Management concerning registered investment companies’ business continuity and transition plans (BCPs). Design/methodology/approach Discusses the SEC’s concerns with fund complexes’ operational complexity and reliance on technology and third-party service providers, lists notable practices in the BCPs of some registered fund complexes, and addresses practical considerations. Findings While the SEC staff recognizes that it is not possible for a fund complex to anticipate or prevent every business continuity event, the staff also believes that fund complexes’ preparedness would be enhanced if in addition to complying with the federal securities laws, fund complexes and their advisers consider additional factors related to BCPs discussed in the Guidance. Practical implications It would be prudent for the fund boards to consider discussing the Guidance with fund investment advisers and fund CCOs to determine the status of fund complex BCPs and any gaps related to the Guidance. Boards may also want to review with their counsel the current BCP reporting framework and any enhancements needed in light of the Guidance. Originality/value Practical guidance from experienced securities, fund management, regulatory and compliance lawyers.

We analyze the trading behavior of the Chinese National Social Security Fund (CNSSF) – a fund that operates in a highly political environment. With a particular focus on the financial crisis [2007(Q3)-2009(Q1)], we show that the CNSSF adopts a rebalancing strategy that achieves a balance between portfolio liquidity and growth.

In this paper we examine the proposition of de-risking through life and the guidance offered by TDFs in the decumulation phase following retirement. Using both Monte Carlo methods along with actual historical experience we investigate the withdrawal experience associated with Glidepath Investing in the US since 1925 for conventional bond-equity portfolios. We find two very powerful and practical conclusions. First, that smoothing the returns on individual assets by simple absolute momentum or trend following techniques is a potent tool to enhance withdrawal rates, often by as much as 50% per annum. And, perhaps of even greater social relevance is that it removes the ‘left-tail’ of unfortunate withdrawal rate experiences, that is, the bad luck of a poor sequence of returns early in decumulation. We show that diversifying assets over time by switching between a risky asset and cash in a systematic way is potentially more important for the retirement income experience than diversifying one’s portfolio across a range of risky asset classes. In particular the willingness to tactically de-risk and re-risk allows the investor to stay exposed to equities in selective calendar fashion for far longer with reduced potential for painful drawdowns and raised potential for higher withdrawal rates. Second, and very importantly, we also show that Glidepath Investing is indeed a very sensible strategy within a few years of the target date. This finding provides succour to enthusiasts for target date investing in the face of the growing hostility in the literature

The central issue of this paper is analysis and resulting proposals to help unsophisticated pension participants achieve pension portfolios that match their level of risk aversion when there is a large amount of unexplained heterogeneity in risk aversion. Target date funds are commonly used as the default investment in defined contribution plans in the U.S., UK and other countries. These funds recognize that individuals usually should hold less risky investment portfolios as their expected retirement date approaches because their ability to bear financial market risk declines as the time horizon decreases. However, these funds do not account for differences in risk aversion among people with the same target date. Empirical studies find large amounts of unexplained heterogeneity in risk aversion. Target date funds cannot deal with this issue simply by sorting people into demographic groupings, other than age, that are known to affect risk aversion, such as gender. Financial education can help people do a better job of managing financial market risk in their pension portfolios, but we argue that it is unreasonable to expect millions of pension participants to attain advanced levels of financial literacy. This paper considers three innovations in target date funds that can help individual pension participants do a better job of managing financial market risk. The analysis can be applied to other situations where defaults are used for investing pension participants’ portfolios. The paper suggests new lines of research relating to individual differences in risk aversion.

Mutual Fund is one of developing industries. Since it was launched in 1996, mutual fund industry has repidly grown. This fact was indicated by more and more mutual funds that are operated. This condition provides more choices for by investors. Beside considering of benefit and value which will be given by mutual fund, investors must also consider performance of mutual fund. The objective of this research is to evaluate performance of mutual fund in Indonesia and what factors which influence the performance of mutual fund. Measure the performance of the mutual fund, this research used model awhich was developed by Alpha Jensen. Using Jensen model caused an unconditional model, which performance of mutual fund can be compared without focusing on the differentiation of the portfolio diversification level. This model measures performance by intercept of regression between excess portfolioreturn as dependent variable and excess market return as independent variable. The result of this research that is only two of six mutual fund has outperform toward market perform as a benchmark performance. Variable of excess market retum level was consistent influenced portfolio return with positive significance. The bad mutual fund performance more caused by stocks election ability of portfolio managers in selectingaccurate stock to porlfolio. Beside uncapability of portfolio managers in selecting accurate stock, the different characteristic of mutual fund caused bad observed mutual fund.

This paper investigates the effect of monetary policies, mainly proxied by interest rate changes, on the relationship between advertising and subsequent net cash flows for Taiwan's mutual fund industry. Based on a comprehensive mutual fund dataset and allowing for a precise estimation of fund inflows and outflows, we find that there is a positive advertising–cash flow relation under different macroeconomic conditions. Taking into account a change in the interest rate, we document that the positive relationship between the two only exists when the interest rate is at a relatively low level regardless of restrictive and expansionary periods. Our empirical findings shed new light on marketing strategies whereby mutual fund advertising works well during relatively low interest rate environments, which are generally interpreted as exhibiting low cost of capital and a good signal of future economic conditions.

Purpose To explain the guidance published on January 6, 2016 by the SEC’s Division of Investment Management containing its views and recommendations relating to mutual fund distribution and sub-accounting fees. Design/methodology/approach Explains the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations focus on “distribution in guise” payments, its 2013 “sweep exam,” an enforcement action against a fund’s adviser and affiliated distributor related to payments for distribution-related activities outside of a 12b-1 plan, lists SEC staff recommendations with respect to mutual fund distribution and sub-accounting fees, summarizes the SEC’s guidance on board oversight of sub-accounting fees, provides indicia that a payment may be for distribution-related activities, and points to the need for mutual funds to have policies and procedures designed to prevent violations of Section 12(b) and Rule 12b-1. Findings The guidance is an outgrowth of the staff’s observations from a three-year “distribution in guise” sweep exam of mutual fund complexes, investment advisers, broker-dealers and transfer agents conducted by the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations and other offices and divisions of the SEC to identify whether firms were using fund assets to directly or indirectly finance any activities primarily intended to result in the sale of fund shares outside of an approved Rule 12b-1 distribution plan. Originality/value Practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

I examine whether independent directors with multiple board affiliations (IDMAs) trade off the interests of one fund relative to another (fund favoritism) or whether they benefit fund shareholders by increasing the level of the board's expertise. Using a sample of mutual funds affiliated with the top 55 fund sponsors from 2002 to 2008, I find that the presence of IDMAs is negatively related to performance/resource shifting across funds within fund families. IDMAs appear to decrease fund fees, increase the return gap associated with the unobserved actions of fund managers, and facilitate the transfer of information across funds in a fund family.

Results achieved by the pension fund depend on how well they are managed or more specifically – on whether all decisions taken by the management are in favour of the fund participants. The goal of this paper is to examine how to harmonize interests of second pillar pension fund participants and fund managing company shareholders. An interview with executives of all pension funds managing companies was performed twice – in 2011 and 2016. The answers allow to make conclusions about possible conflict of interest in pension fund management and measures taken by the companies and the state to minimize the risk. A survey of 507 pension fund participants was performed in order to obtain information on participants’ attitude and expectations. Despite the fact that most of participants are dissatisfied with the pension fund performance results, they would not agree to allocate additional resources to hire more competent managers. To protect the interests of pension fund participants the stability of the pension accumulation system as a whole must be ensured. Also it is important to promote mutual confidence of all interested parties, to provide participants with easily understandable information, reflecting real performance results.

We present a solution based on a suitable combination of heuristics and parallel processing techniques for finding the best allocation of the financial assets of a pension fund, taking into account all the specific rules of the fund. We compare the values of an objective function computed with respect to a large set (thousands) of possible scenarios for the evolution of the Net Asset Value (NAV) of the share of each asset class in which the financial capital of the fund is invested. Our approach does not depend neither on the model used for the evolution of the NAVs nor on the objective function. In particular, it does not require any linearization or similar approximations of the problem. Although we applied it to a situation in which the number of possible asset classes is limited to few units (six in the specific case), the same approach can be followed also in other cases by grouping asset classes according to their features.

Retirement savings allow investors to earn income after retirement by saving while being part of the workforce. Retirement savings comprise the largest portion of retirement savings and should be safeguarded by effective regulation. To safeguard retirement savings, exposure to foreign asset investments is limited. However, in an emerging economy, limiting foreign asset investments, especially investment in developed markets, could hamper the potential investment returns due to the translation risk. To assess the effect of translation risk, a preservation provident fund was used in the present study to determine whether the returns of this preservation provident fund would be adversely affected by investment allocation regulation. The findings indicated how the translation effect affected the preservation provident fund, illustrating the adverse unintended consequences of investment regulation in emerging market economies. Consequently, regulators should reconsider the maximum allowed foreign asset investment in pension fund regulations to enhance investment returns from foreign asset investments