When it comes to choice: less is more
Spoilt for choice. That’s us. We all faced this challenge during this past festive season. Who bought a barista-in-a-box using those little coffee capsules as a gift and had to confront an array of choices whilst standing in a busy high street shop? Did you choose propriety capsules or the open standard ones? What brand...
Watch trading costs and help guard retirement savings
Saving as little as 1.3% on trading costs can result in 21% more capital at retirement. The institutional investment value chain finds itself operating in an environment with an ever-increasing focus on costs: from administration fees to performance and management fees. As illustrated in National Treasury’s paper on costs, seemingly insignificant...
South African private equity returns keep pace with listed indices
Returns on investment in South African private equity remain ahead of the returns delivered by listed equity, backing the case for private equity in a diversified institutional portfolio. This returns track record, along with the continued market recovery since the 2008 financial crisis, supports a new wave of fund raising by South African private equity...
Understand Africa’s uniqueness and be rewarded in 2014
The investment prospects for Africa as a whole are exciting and offer the potential to provide great long-term returns, according to Josef Odili, Head of Africa Manager Research at RisCura. “The key is to have a thorough understanding of each country’s unique situation. A frontier market like Africa (ex-South Africa) has a very different dynamic...
Getting to grips with Namibia’s Regulation 28
Getting to grips with Namibia's Regulation 28 The much anticipated revisions to Regulation 28 have brought to the fore what Trustees and retirement funds should do in order to ensure that future statistical data regarding the size of the retirement fund market, market value of asset classes, geographical split of the assets and claims history...
Turning on the Christmas lights
Those who know me know that I am a Grinch when it comes to Christmas. If mince pies and mulled wine were really that nice we would eat and drink them all year long! But what the arrival of Christmas does mean is that on my latest trip to Heathrow the Economist’s ‘World in 2014’...
Replacement ratios in retirement
A replacement ratio is the ratio of the income you receive from your pension once retired, to the salary you were receiving just before retirement. For example, if your pensionable salary just before you retire is R10 000 per month and your replacement ratio is 80%, you might expect to receive R8 000 per month...
Meet Prasheen Singh, Head of RisCura Consulting
What does your position as a senior investment consultant involve? My position involves advising several of South Africa’s largest institutions on how to meet their investment goals. For example, for pension funds I advise how to best structure their investments so as to provide for their members’ retirement income needs. This entails...