The tyranny of the present

In a recent issue of its flagship publication Sigma, SwissRe described Scenario analysis in insurance, identifying scenario analysis as a key tool to analyse fat-tail risks and their impact on profitability and competitive position of insurers. One of the pioneering sources of scenario analysis is the approach developed by Shell. Whereas scenario analysis is referred to as a key tool for both strategic planning as well as enterprise risk management of insurance, Sigma reports with some degree of astonishment that banks do not use it to assess their total enterprise risk exposure.

Applying the concept of scenario analysis to pension funds should be self-evident, not least if you think of a pension fund as the insurance subsidiary of your firm. It faces a set of opportunities, threats and parameters quite similar to those of an insurance, yet scenario analysis is not common in the pensions industry. Nevertheless, a number of pensions-specific scenarios easily come to mind: a jump in longevity due to unexpected medical progress, prolonged negative real interest rates, a pandemic (as explained in Sigma), regulatory changes to the competitive landscape ...

The Economist Intelligence Unit has just come up with its own bleak exercise in scenario analysis (hat tip Global Guerrillas). Its central forecast of stabilisation is assigned a probability of just 60%, whereas the more disruptive instability scenarios are assigned 30% (de-globalisation) and 10% (collapse in USD) respectively. Scenario analysis has been posted as a means to escape the tyranny of the present, but being where we are today, we are not so sure this is a good thing.

Capital preservation

As an institutional investor, we are always interested in informative long-term charts. This one fits the bill, even though it is probably meant to shock today's investor with its implicit statement that there was no money to be made in 43 years of investment in the Dow.

However, some qualifications need to be made. The obvious one is that the chart is just a price chart corrected for inflation, but without taking into account the dividend yield, which is probably about 5% p.a. by now. Getting that kind of return on top of real, inflation-adjusted capital preservation on a long-term basis is no mean feat indeed!