The National Pension Fund Association invests the retirement savings of the self-employed. It has no relationship to the Pension Fund Association.
Membership of the Association is via entities serving individuals living in the same prefecture or engaged in the same profession – accounting, dentistry and “legal scrivening” among them. It has 521,609 members, down from 771,662 ten years ago, about half of them over 50 years old.
The NPFA had assets of 2.7 trillion yen at the end of the financial year on 31 March 2012 when 15 asset management firms, 10 of them foreign-headquartered, held its mandates as did two trust banks. The appearance of this duo on the Association’s manager list, alongside two other trust banks, suggests it has money in pooled — as well as segregated — accounts with each of them.
According to the annual ranking by Towers Watson/Pensions & Investments the NPFA is the world’s 115th largest pension fund.
In April 2009 the NPFA’s model portfolio was revised to be: 25% domestic bonds, 12% foreign bonds, 10% hedged foreign bonds, 25% domestic equities and 28% foreign stock.
Last year the time-weighted return on its domestic bond component was 0.02% below that of its Nomura-BPI benchmark.
However, the four other portfolio components were ahead of target with hedged foreign bonds up by 8.06% and unhedged foreign bonds by 5.44% while their respective Citigroup World Government Bond indices benchmarks rose 7.92% and 4.99%. Domestic equities climbed 0.65% against 0.59% for the total return TOPIX and foreign equities managed 0.51% against 0.50% for the MSCI Kokusai.
In November this 2012 (see archive) the NPFA became the first Japanese pension fund to issue an RFP for a passive-domestic-equities mandate based on MSCI’s Japan minimum-volatility index.
The National Pension Funds Association / 国民年金基金連合会
SMBC Roppongi Building, 6-1-21 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0032
Tel: (81-3) 5411 0211, Fax: (81-3) 5411 0217, Web site: www.npfa.or.jp/
Rijicho: Mr Shozo Matsumoto
© 2013 Japan Pensions Industry Database/Jo McBride. Reporting on, and analysis of, the secretive business of Japanese institutional investment takes commitment, money and time. This blog is one of the products of such commitment. It may nonetheless be reproduced or used as a source without charge so long as (but only so long as) the use is credited to www.ijapicap.com.
This blog would not exist without the help and humour of Diane Stormont 1959-2012
