I heard an interesting statistic this week suggesting that there have been some 39 legislative measures affecting pension schemes drawn up as a result of the financial crisis, but to date only 10 have actually been implemented.
Basel III, Solvency II, AIFMD, EMIR… the list of regulatory changes being debated, or in the process of being implemented, is stacking up at a rate of knots.
This means pension funds are likely to be extremely busy for the next few years and it’s no wonder they have begun to express concern around both the pace and volume of regulatory change, which shows no sign of abating.
This week State Street published research carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit among 150 pension schemes from across Europe. It revealed one in three schemes found it ‘extremely difficult’ or ‘difficult’ to keep up with new regulatory developments in the industry.
It seems UK schemes are more concerned than their European counterparts. When asked ‘do you feel demands from regulators and ratings agencies are a challenge?’ 78% of European schemes said the demands were a ‘slight’ or ‘significant’ challenge. However, this jumped to 88% among UK schemes.
And over the next five years, 87% of schemes believe governance demands will escalate, while 81% think investment decisions will become more complex. It is also worrying that only 60% of schemes feet they have access to sufficient portfolio data to allow them to understand their total risk exposure.
Meanwhile, 42% said they have enough information to gain an insight into the total investment costs, which presumably leaves 58% who don’t. This is worrying.
The pensions industry has long been plagued by over-regulation and this troubles me, particularly when it comes to smaller schemes who do not have the governance budget to adequately research things like new asset classes and managers, let alone keep tabs on, for example, whether their derivatives have been centrally cleared or not.
In order to try and keep costs down schemes will no doubt look to outsource to third parties and perhaps even hand over investment management, including fiduciary duty, in the coming years. Indeed, State Street’s research found 76% of schemes believe smaller funds will look to outsource in the next five years.
But all of this regulatory change and subsequent outsourcing to deal with it comes at a cost. At the moment there is no impact assessment which has summarised how much these regulatory requirements will cost pension funds in the main.
It is important therefore that the regulators take into account the specifics of pension funds and the challenges they face around funding before signing off on some of these changes.
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