Optimal Pension Fund Investment Returns

How to manage a pension fund investment portfolio in economic uncertain times and shifting financial markets? Let's try to answer this question from a more practical point of view instead of a pure scientific approach......

Historical Performance

Let's take a look at the performance of two large and leading Dutch pension funds

First of all we take a look at the historical (1993-2014) yearly returns of both pension funds and try to figure what n-year moving averages results in a stable and mostly non-negative yearly performance.

  
Smoothing Returns

If our goal is to 'smooth' returns to pension fund members and to prevent negative returns as much as possible, a '3-year moving average return approach' as basis for sharing returns to pension fund members, could be a practical start. 

In this approach, a single maximum cut of around 3.3% is largely compensated by the returns in other years as the next chart of  '3 Year Backward moving Average Yearly Return' shows:

Of course if we want to protect pension members also against systemic risk and crises, an additional investment reserve of around 15%-20% would be necessary.

The  next slide gives an impression of the effects of a 10 year moving average approach. I'll leave the conclusions up to the readers. of this blog.

Main conclusion is that the analysed pension funds ABP and PFZW are able to generate a relative stable overall portfolio return over time. They manage to do so, despite the fact that their liabilities yearly fluctuate as a result of the fact that they have to be discounted by a risk-free rate. 

A risk free rate that itself isn't risk free at all and - on top of - is continuously 'shaped'(manipulated ) by the central banks to artificially low interest levels.



Managing Volatility instead of Confidence Levels
A strategy based on managing the funding ratio of a pension fund given a certain confidence level and given the actual method of risk-free discounting of liabilities, is doomed to fail in a low interest environment. Discussions about confidence levels are also a waste of time, as long time confidence - at any confidence level - eventually will turn out to be an illusion.

As long as pension funds are able to demonstrate that that they are able to manage and control the volatility of their assets within chosen limits (risk attitude 1; e.g. 10%) and within a chosen time horizon (risk attitude 2; e.g. 20 years) , they will be able to fulfill their pension obligations, or to timely adapt their chosen risk-return strategy to structural market changes.


How to curb volatility?
Managing the volatility of an pension fund investment portfolio within a certain risk attitude is one of the greatest challenges of a pension fund board.

In short, the traditional instruments to curb volatility are:

1. Diversification
   With the help of diversification the asset mix of a  pension fund can be tuned to optimize long term risk-return in relatively 'normal' market circumstances.
    
2. Capital Requirements & Management
   By defining and maintaining a well quantitative risk-based capital and investment reserve policy, a relatively smooth yearly return available for pension fund members can be achieved in a systematical risk environment.
    
3. Economic Scenarios
   By studying portfolio outcomes under different economic scenarios, a short term 'best fitting' near future volatility asset strategy can be developed.
    
4. Trigger points
   By defining asset portfolio actions that will 'fire' once particular trigger points of specific asset classes are met, all measures based on 'damage control' are in place.
    

Unfortunately the above measures all fall short in case of systemic market events.

In case of crises, like the current Greece crisis, agent based models, also called behavioral models, can help to manage systematic volatility.


Behavioral Asset Management
A way to minimize systemic volatility in an investment portfolio is to apply new 'Behavioral Economic Stress Test' models. These kind of tools, as provided y a FinTech50 2015 company called Symetrics, enable pension boards and investment managers to model and to anticipate crises.

More is explained in the next short presentation "The value of economic scenarios from a risk perspective" by Jos Berkemeijer, one of the four managing partners of Symetrics.

Used Links
- Agent based Models
- Behavioral Models by Symetrics
- Spreadsheet wit data used in this blog
- Presentation: The value of economic scenarios from a risk perspective

Dutch Pension Muppet Show

There's a lot of fuzz about the performance of the largest (€ 246 billion assets) Dutch Pension Funds ABP and the somewhat smaller (€ 91 billion) PFZW (former PGGM). According the Dutch television program Zembla and Bureau Bosch Asset Consultants, Dutch pension funds would have consistently underperformed.

ABP commented: "The yearly return of 7.1% on average since 1993 is much higher than returns on government bonds would have been and is in part thanks to our equity investments."

PFZW overshoots ABP wit the comment: "PFZW's calculations show a return of 8.4% on average during the past 20 years which is much higher than the 10-year Dutch government bonds of 5.3% on average during the same period."

Great statements, but who's right?

Performance Test
Let's quickly "do the proof" by comparing (benchmarking) the 'modest' yearly performance of ABP with the yearly performance of 10 year Government Euro Bond Yield Benchmark as provided by the ECB.

Both pension funds are not limited to  the Dutch market, therefore  performance is not related to Dutch Government Bonds, but to 10-Y Euro Government Bonds.

As the yearly performance of ABP in a particular year is in fact a kind of 'compound performance' of the years before, it's more realistic to relate ABP's (yearly) performance to the 10-years moving average of 10-Y Euro Bonds.  

What becomes clear from is that ABP's volatility overshadows the 10-year Bond's volatility by far. As a consequence ABP's out-performance should be significant.

Let's test this by looking at the YTD (Year To Date) performance of ABP on the long run:

The average performance of ABP 1993-2010 indeed turns out exactly 7.1% as published, but hardly outperforms the 10-year Euro Bonds Moving average of 6.8%.

0.3% '18-years out-performance' (OP-18) for such a high volatility is strongly discussable. The long term out-performance 1994-2010 (OP-17) was 0.0%. The out-performances of shorter periods (OP-[18-x]) are not stable and strongly swap from positive to negative.

Benchmarking Pension funds performance with Euro Bonds 0f 20 years or longer would be even more adequate and in line with the duration of pension fund's liabilities. Taken into account that 20 year Bonds on average score a 0.25% à 1.00% higher return than 10 year Bonds, it can be concluded that Dutch pension funds on average do not out-perform Government Bonds. Not to mention the influence of the yearly investment-costs of at least 0.2% on the returns.....

Pension Fund PFZW

Pension Fund PFZW is completely lost on their non-transparent and backwards changing performance of 8.4% over the last 20 years.

From their annual (inconsistent) accounts it can be concluded that their 2001-2010 performance came down to 4,8%. This performance is exactly the same as the performance op ABP in that period and underperforms the moving average 10-years Euro Bonds with 0.7% !!!

Conclusion

It's clear that pension funds don't convince in the outperformance of Government Bonds and that the pension industry is in desperate need for an impartial benchmark with regard to out or underperformance of Bonds.

The comments from ABP and PFZW, Boenders and Cocken are like 'shooting from the hip' and must be qualified as highly unprofessional.

Dutch pension fund members are watching an extra edition of the Muppet show. Who's gonna stop this pension media madness and bring some order in the pension room?


Related Links and Sources:

- Source: 10 year Government Euro Bond Yield Benchmark
- 'grave miscalculations' in Zembla (Boender aand Kocken
- Watch: Zembla 
- Download: Spreadsheet with calculations as presented
- IPE: Heavyweights ABP, PFZW come out swinging against Zembla
- Bloomberg: 10-year, - -  30-year performance Gv. Bonds