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Risk Management Conference
Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - June 14, 2012
In an increasingly interconnected and volatile financial world, risk management is a concern of all investors. Whether a pension plan, an endowment or foundation or a family office, the establishment, management and monitoring of investment risk guidelines has become a more complex task in recent years. Investors are looking for new and better ways to understand the risks they are taking, and want risk management methods that provide timely data to inform their investment decisions.
Best practice shows that more time is being spent on ensuring that institutional investors have well-structured risk management systems. So what are the components of such a system and how do they work? From a well-defined governance structure through a clear investment policy to a comprehensive measurement and reporting process, today’s risk management systems are evolving entities that change as the world’s financial and economic markets develop.
This conference series will consider risk management strategies and processes that allow investors to keep pace with the times.
Public Funds Defined Contribution Summit
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Public plan sponsors face myriad challenges, not least of which is how to ensure their defined benefit funds are able to meet their obligations. Increasingly, though, defined contribution plans are becoming a more important part of the package of retirement benefits for public employees. These plans, which operate under many names, are being streamlined and restructured. So rising on the public pension agenda is how to create the most appropriate investment lineup for their DC plan.
Making sure that a defined contribution plan meets the needs of both the sponsoring organization and its participants is a tall order in this financial and economic environment. This conference series will give plan sponsors the most up-to-date thinking on how best to balance DB and DC plan offerings, how to best communicate with workers and how to get the operations to work most effectively. It will explore the benefits of employing institutional investment structures, the challenges of default investing, the duties of the plan sponsor versus the participant and how best to foolproof a DC plan for the future.
Liability Driven Investing Conference
Thursday, September 20, 2012 - September 27, 2012
Even as Liability Driven Investing (LDI) continues to dominate the thoughts of defined benefit plan sponsors in the U.S., not all plans have signed up to the strategy. Those that have started down the path to full funding are doing it for a number of different reasons. Many intend to keep their plans open, so LDI is a way to ensure that funded status volatility is minimized and the need for contributions limited. Others are on a glidepath to full funding in order to terminate a closed or frozen plan. Whatever the reason, LDI is a complex strategy to implement and maintain in ever-changing financial and economic environments. A dynamic approach to pension plan management and support from company managers are necessary components for success. This series of conferences will provide the information plan sponsors need to implement, monitor and dynamically manage a LDI strategy.
Retirement Income Solutions Summit
Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - October 11, 2012
A paycheck for life. That was what a defined benefit plan offered workers. Now with more workers facing retirement without the security of a DB plan, the focus has turned to how defined contribution plans can meet the needs of participants for income through retirement. How can plan sponsors ensure that their participants live well in retirement?
One scenario has a retiring employee taking their lump sum and spending their retirement managing this often quite large amount of money efficiently to ensure steady income. But that scenario may be a fantasy. Almost 80% of DC plan participants express the same reservations about making investment decisions after retirement as they have about choosing investments while within the DC plan.
Now the investment and insurance industries are tackling the issue of constructing retirement income solutions that provide both guarantees of income and protection against downside risk, while still offering market exposure. Getting the paycheck for life that would solve the retirement income conundrum for many is now within reach.
The Retirement Income Solutions series of conferences and events is designed to help DC plan sponsors consider just these issues, bringing the latest thinking and product developments to their attention.
Managing Return-Seeking Assets Summit
Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - October 18, 2012
All investors need to make their assets work for them. After the roller coaster markets of the past few years, the focus on returns has been tempered with an increasing awareness of the need for risk control. Call it the new approach to managing the growth portfolio.
So where does an investor find sustainable returns in today’s markets? From the consideration of where to find growth – at home or abroad – to the way to balance active and passive approaches to the role that alternative strategies might play, investors with a diverse range of return targets are re-examining the way they manage their growth portfolios. This can involve considering return enhancing strategies such as hedge funds, private equity and commodities, as well as strategies that offer downside protection, such as low volatility equity, inflation-hedging or risk parity approaches.
This conference series will examine new and old strategies to managing equity and alternative portfolios.
P&I West Coast Defined Contribution Conference
Sunday, November 4, 2012 - November 6, 2012
Please join us at the annual P&I West Coast Defined Contribution Conference to be held November 4-6, 2012, at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
Hear keynote speakers address legislation and regulation, the economy, and investment strategy. Take home new ideas you can use on the job from panel presentations on plan design, communications, investment options and more.
We're also excited to present the first Innovator Awards at the conference to visionary organizations and individuals making new and unusual changes to their defined contribution plans.
Nothing compares with having an in-person conversation with like-minded professionals who face the challenges that you face. That is why the Post-Conference Plan Sponsor Round Table is invaluable. You have the opportunity to talk openly with fellow plan sponsors and to receive personal advice from an industry consultant as well as an ERISA attorney. Several past attendees have told us that this session alone made the trip to the conference worthwhile!
Global Pension Symposium
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - November 14, 2012
In this, the seventh year of this important international symposium, Pensions & Investments and Nomura Securities will be bringing together the world’s foremost plan sponsors, consultants and academics to consider the state of global pension investing. With a focus that is at once theoretical and practical, it is an opportunity for Japanese plan sponsors to better understand the activity of their peers in the pension community, while also hearing from global plan sponsors who face the same issues about meeting the retirement promises to plan participants. The two-day conference offers in-depth presentations by consultants and academics on a range of issues that face all plan sponsors, including asset allocation and risk management.
In the years since the financial crisis of 2008, investors have become used to certain new realities – volatility of markets and low interest rates. But other difficulties have also come into view, with fiscal instability in developed markets, political upheavals and a dramatic increase in exogenous events, such as natural disasters. Should plan sponsors change their practices in the face of these new realities?
Plan sponsors have been reconsidering their asset allocation and whether the plan’s strategic investment policy is fit for purpose. In a fast-changing investment world where returns on the most traditional of assets have been low, plan sponsors need to have the ability to act quickly to take advantage of trends, while still maintaining an appropriate focus on risk management, monitoring and budgeting. This conference will consider best practice in global pension investing, strategic asset allocation and risk management.