Singapore-listed exchange-traded fund (ETF) assets under management jumped 67.27% year-on-year as of end-April as bonds and equities funds soared.
Total assets of ETFs listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) was S$9.2 billion (US$6.9 billion) as of April 30, up from S$5.5 billion a year ago, the bourse says in a statement on May 11.
Equities ETF assets rose from S$1.75 billion in April 2019 to S$2.98 billion in April 2020, but bond assets grew more than two-fold to S$4.23 billion from S$1.84 billion last year.
Investors moved out of equities into bonds because of concerns about global stock market volatility, according to a fund manager at a US asset management company.
The Philippines’ top two pension fund chiefs received big pay hikes last year, including a 91%-plus jump for Rolando Macasaet of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), prompting a local fund manager to question such increases while ordinary Filipinos reel from the coronavirus crisis.
Macasaet is the president and general manager of GSIS. He earned 15.25 million pesos (US$318,748) in salary and allowances in 2020, up from 7.96 million pesos in 2019, making him the fourth highest paid civil servant in the country, according to a report from the Philippines Commission of Audit on May 11.
Although the report did not give reasons for the pay hike, it could be partly because Macasaet’s role was made permanent in March 2020, at the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic. He was previously the acting president and general manager of GSIS, which had 1.19 trillion pesos of assets as of end-2019.
Indonesia’s pension fund industry assets fell 0.3% in the first quarter as stocks declined and government bonds rose.
The industry ended the first three months of 2021 with 313.74 trillion rupiah (US$22.92 billion) of total assets, down from 314.67 trillion rupiah at the end of last year, according to latest data published on the website of the Financial Services Authority of Indonesia. As usual, the regulator did not provide any analysis.
The pension fund industry’s government bond assets rose 11.32% to 79.14 trillion rupiah, while equity assets fell 6.22% to 30.14 trillion rupiah. The benchmark Jakarta Composite Index fell 1.25% in the first quarter.
The decline was largely due to the underperformance of foreign stocks, according to a fund manager from an Indonesian asset management firm.
Malaysia’s Social Security Organisation (Socso) aims to cover 200,000 active self-employed individuals by the end of 2021, a roughly 60,000 increase from the current level, which may put more pressure on the state-owned organistion to raise the contribution rate.
The move comes as the number of self-employed doubled over the last year as people who lost jobs in the ongoing coronavirus crisis turned to self-employment to earn a living.
Socso has obtained approval from the National Employment Council to expand social security coverage to various self-employed groups, the organisation says in a statement on May 9. The council, which comes under the Prime Minister’s Office, was set up to help create and preserve jobs.