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TEACHING

Courses

FINE 464  Pension Funds & Retirement Systems 

FINE 541  Applied Investments

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Awards

Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate Programs at Desautels (2020)

World’s Best 40 under 40 Business Professors, Poets and Quants (2017)

Distinguished Teaching Award for Undergraduate Programs at Desautels (2016)

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Case Studies

All case studies were written by students under the supervision of Professor Betermier for the course
FINE 464 Pension Funds & Retirement Systems.

Maple Leaf Pension Plan: A Inflationary Resilient Decumulation Strategy (2023)

Inflation remains stubbornly high, and it is crushing real returns for investment managers. The situation is especially challenging for pensioners who live on a fixed income. We study the case of a fictional Canadian Defined Contribution pension fund that is designing an inflationary resilient decumulation strategy for its members.

Australia's SuperEasy: Designing a effective net-zero strategy (2022)

Asset managers have committed to achieving net-zero portfolios by 2050, but a scarcity of high-quality data and a lack of goal alignment with asset owners have made this an arduous task. Amidst rising temperatures and an everchanging regulatory landscape, how can they design sustainable strategies that transition to carbon-neutral investments without sacrificing returns?

Bouwen & Pensioen: pension plan design in the context of low yields (2021)

How can long-term asset managers find ways to sustainably generate returns while minimizing the risks in the current environment of ultra-low bond yields? We focus on the ongoing pension reform in the Netherlands and study the portfolio design of a fictional newly launched collective defined contribution plan (CDC) which provides new possibilities for plan members to share risks with each other.

UK launches a new sovereign wealth fund to promote economic equality and independence (2020)

Countries are seeking independence and geo-economic dynamics are changing. How should long-term asset managers invest in the midst of rising protectionist tendencies and social inequalities? We study the British National Strategic Fund, a new sovereign wealth fund with a triple mandate to generate risk-adjusted returns and promote economic equality and independence.

Designing Environmentally sustainable investment strategies (2019)

We study the case of a fictional fund based in Newfoundland and Labrador. The fund is under pressure to divest from its holdings in the oil & gas industry, which is the large, revenue-generating part of the fund's assets. The purpose of the case is to devise an optimal portfolio strategy that accommodates the competing interests of the different stakeholders involved and addresses climate risks.

Solving the underfunding of U.S. state pension plans (2018)

The underfunding of U.S. state pension plans is incredibly difficult to solve because it involves a large and diverse group of stakeholders with conflicting interests. U.S. regulation also mandates pension funds to discount their liabilities at the expected return on their assets. We study the case of an underfunded public pension plan in a fictional U.S. state: Vandalia.

Rescuing a corporate D.B. fund: the case of Lumber Co. (2017)

When a private pension plan runs a deficit, should the fund manager try to eliminate the deficit by taking on more risk and aim for higher returns, or is it up to the corporate sponsor to make a special contribution to the plan? We study the case of an underfunded private pension plan in Canada.

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