An increasing number of pension funds are opting to invest in ‘alternative' or ‘smart beta' indices to supplement their passive management activities. Several competing methods currently exist, each with their own objectives. Analysing the risk contribution of each factor by type of approach gives investors a clearer picture of the various competing smart beta methodologies.

According to Philippe Goubeault, CFO of Agirc Arrco, 'Smart Beta' strategies can already be part of the asset allocation program of Agirc and Arrco even if their current weight in existing portfolios is not significant ...

Investors increasingly embrace “smart beta” investing, by which we mean passively following an index in which stock weights are not proportional to their market capitalizations, but based on some alternative weighting scheme. Examples include fundamentally-weighted indices and minimum-volatility indices.

The return on the Government Pension Fund Global in 2012 was 13.4 percent, the fund's second best performance ever.

In a survey entitled ‘Reactions to “A Review of Corporate Bond Indices: Construction Principles, Return Heterogeneity, and Fluctuations in Risk Exposures”' researchers at EDHEC-Risk Institute have analysed industry reactions to a previous EDHEC-Risk study on corporate bond indices...