Briefly:

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The Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) has issued a statement welcoming the initiatives announced by the G-20 leaders last week in London.

“We believe that the G-20 has charted a new course for bringing long-term stability to the global financial services sector,” said Frank Swedlove, CLHIA president. “The G-20 has adopted measures to deal with many of the underlying causes of this financial crisis.”

The measures that the G-20 announced were largely in line with the recommendations made by the CLHIA and its international counterparts in a letter issued March 27 (read: Insurers call for smart regulation)

The leaders for the 20 largest economies urged individual regulators to coordinate their efforts, rather than calling for a single global regulator, as some had wanted.

The G-20 also called on accounting standard setters to further improve the applicability of fair value accounting.

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Northern Rivers alters fund line

Northern Rivers Capital Management has received the go-ahead from investors to merge the Northern Rivers Evolution Fund into the Northern Rivers Conservative Growth Fund.

The company has also been given the green light to change the manager of the Northern Rivers Monthly Income and Capital Appreciation Fund and the Northern Rivers Monthly Income and Capital Appreciation Trust Pool to Mavrix Fund Management.

Subject to receipt of all regulatory approvals, it is expected that these changes will be effective on or about April 30, 2009.

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Claymore rolls out two new ETFs

Claymore Investments has launched two new foreign equity based ETFs: the Claymore Broad Emerging Markets ETF and the Claymore US Fundamental Index ETF.

The emerging markets ETF is designed to provide exposure to “an Emerging Markets Benchmark Index, such as the MSCI Emerging Markets Index” according to Claymore. Currency risks are hedged.

The U.S. equity ETF is based on the FTSE RAFI Fundamental Indexes and is not hedged.

“These two ETFs cover very important segments of the international equity market place and complement our existing line up of ETFs,” said Som Seif, president and CEO of Claymore Investments, Inc. “The Emerging Markets ETF with a currency hedge is a great way for Canadians to potentially reduce their risk when investing in emerging markets.”

(04/08/09)