The Bureau of Labor Insurance will disclose, on a half-yearly basis, major investment information for the labor insurance fund, the performance of which is of great concern to 9 million workers in the country. This reporting frequency is higher than the standard adopted by large international pension funds. For example, the CalPERS (The California Public Employees' Retirement System), a role model of government-managed funds in the United States, is disclosing the relevant information on its annual investment reports once a year. By increasing the information disclosure frequency, the Bureau endeavors to strengthen citizens’ confidence in the government’s abilities to manage the funds and to improve their understanding of the fund operating procedures. The information will also be used by government and academic organizations for research and follow-up, so as to enhance supervision of the labor insurance fund and achieve better investment performance.
Starting from 30 July, the Bureau of Labor Insurance, Council of Labor Affairs, Executive Yuan disclosed on its global website additional investment information about the labor insurance fund, enabling the public to better understand the utilization of the fund. Additional items include: investment details of domestic debt securities, loans to government or state-owned enterprises (Agricultural Insurance Loan), list of deposits with domestic banks, list of investment in domestic short-term bills, list of investment in land and houses, details of investment in foreign debt securities, commissions to domestic proprietary securities dealers, management fees for domestic discretionary investment. (Please visit the global website of the Bureau of Labor Insurance:
Home » Labor Insurance Fund).
Other investment information of the labor insurance fund disclosed previously include: Daily disclosure: Net asset value of the funds under discretionary investment, disclosed on the website. Monthly disclosure: Allocation (% by amount) and performance of respective investment items of the labor insurance fund, equity investment portfolio of the labor insurance fund (% by stock category), performance statistics for discretionary investment (performance of respective SITEs companies) and the evaluation criteria. Half-yearly disclosure: Information of self-managed equities disposed and percentage of top ten equity or bonds invested. Yearly disclosure: Annual report of fund utilization, Net asset value and overall performance of the fund.
To provide further information to the public, the Bureau has, in recent years, gradually publicized more information including investment policies, annual fund performance since the segregation of the labor insurance and national health insurance systems in 1995 and annual performance of self-managed domestic equities since its inception in July 1997. For yearly disclosure, the Bureau also provided additional information of risk indicators (e.g., the SHARP ratio). For the equity investment portfolio of labor insurance fund (% by stock category) disclosed on a monthly-basis, the Bureau has additionally disclosed the weight of SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) among its equity investments. Other information disclosed include the operating procedures and risk control procedures for respective investment items, measures relating to the handling of conflict of interests by relevant fund management/utilization staff, confidentiality obligations and audit mechanisms.
Further, the Bureau has, on 27 July 2010, announced the results of “Investment Manager Selection of the Six Batch Domestic Discretionary Investment of Labor InsuranceThe Sixth Open Recruitment of Mandated Institutions for Domestic Discretionary Investment Business”. Following a review and evaluation process, a total of eight SITE companies were selected, including: Cathay Securities Investment Trust Co., Ltd., ING Securities Investment & Trust Co., Uni-President Asset Management Corp., Allianz Global Investors, SinoPac Securities Investment Trust., Ltd., Fuh Hwa Securities Investment Co., Ltd., Polaris Securities Investment Trust Co., Ltd. and Fubon Asset Management Co., Ltd. Each of the mandated institutions shall receive a NT$4 billion discretionary investment fund, with a total contract amount of NT$32 billion. The Bureau shall choose a suitable time based on stock market conditions, to administer the contract signing and fund transfer procedures.