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What are the challenges facing the chancellor and are British pension schemes really are laggards compared to Canadian ones, when it comes to investing in private assets?
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What are the challenges facing the chancellor and are British pension schemes really are laggards compared to Canadian ones, when it comes to investing in private assets?
In the first edition of AOX we look at the early data on whether pension schemes are actually investing more in private assets or not, in response to Rachel Reeves’s requests.
Pension consolidators ploughed into private market assets in the final quarter of 2024 as the Royal Mail Pension Fund appointed a manager to run the UK’s first ever collective defined contribution pension scheme.
Despite a quarter-on-quarter increase in transaction volumes, the number of bulk insurance deals completed by UK corporate pension funds in Q3 2024 was below the 16 recorded in the second quarter of the year. That drop in deals coincided with greater discussion around scheme run-on.
Local government pension schemes and LGPS pools surveyed by MandateWire in the third quarter of 2024 focused on alternative portfolios, in part due to the UK government’s push to encourage the LGPS to provide UK private market funding.
Nordic university and local authority funds continued their hunt for traditional balanced managers during the second quarter of the year, while other investors in the region sought diversification in illiquid alternatives.
HSBC Global Asset Management topped MandateWire’s manager league table in September, winning the most mandates among the European investors we surveyed during the month, while BlackRock attracted the highest net inflows.
There was a clear divide between the actions of the 45 UK corporate pension funds and master trusts surveyed during the first quarter of 2024. While individual pension funds remain focused on de-risking and bulk insurance strategies, master trusts, with their longer investment horizons, concentrated on illiquid alternatives.
During the first quarter of 2024, MandateWire reported on the activity of 39 individual local government pension schemes and six LGPS pools.
As one of the most newsworthy assets during the past few years, cryptocurrency has gained attention for providing stellar returns but also for suffering steep losses. While crypto asset managers share a positive outlook for digital assets, institutional investors and advisors are less sanguine and more wary.
Investment consultants are advising UK defined benefit pension schemes to conduct wider investment strategy and governance reviews that go beyond their liability-driven investments as the Bank of England expands its emergency bond market support ahead of the end of its gilt-buying programme on Friday.
In a continuation of the year’s trends, the final quarter of 2024 saw the individual local government pension schemes and LGPS pools surveyed by MandateWire targeting alternative asset classes, with a strong preference for property and infrastructure, as well as private debt.