Climate, natural capital and inequality are three key themes that pose a material risk on client funding outcomes according to Brightwell, which manages around £37 billion of assets on behalf of the United Kingdom’s BT Pension Scheme, BTPS, as well as assets of the DB arm of the EE Pension Scheme.

BTPS rebranded as Brightwell a year ago, pitching to manage other pension funds’ assets alongside its own portfolio on the basis that working together and sharing operational resources has profound benefits. It says it offers pension funds a coherent, single approach to pension management that allows schemes to replace their cohort of actuarial, investment, fiduciary and covenant advisors, plus multiple asset managers, with a single operation.

It’s inaugural sustainability report details how it will invest in climate opportunities like new technologies and companies successfully mitigating the risk of climate change. But avoid investments in companies at risk of stranded asset, new regulation or high costs due to carbon pricing or extreme weather events disrupting supply chains.

“We help clients understand how climate change could affect their pension scheme and provide solutions to better insulate them from its effects,” states the report. “We encourage setting net zero goals where appropriate and review the impact of sustainability on investments on an ongoing basis, and measure the impact at least annually.”

Prioritising natural capital

A second investment theme will address natural capital. Biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and the associated value at risk are now key considerations in Brightwell’s investment process. Freshwater provision, sustainable agricultural, regional conflicts, and migration due to resource shortages are likely to be exacerbated by biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation.

“The consequences will be felt in supply chains, the availability of resources and growth of most sectors around the world,” warns the report.

Brightwell also highlights the link between natural resources and businesses through their supply chains in a “notoriously complex” web. It warned that the impact from the loss of natural resources will likely to be felt gradually over a longer period of time, rather than a one-off, short, dramatic event.

The asset manager will also seek to address inequality via its investment process. Human rights, modern slavery, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion and the use of artificial intelligence are all now integrated into investment decision making.

“We believe systemic inequality has the potential to destabilise the financial and social systems within which our clients invest and benefit from. Increased inequality is likely to lead to reduced economic growth through greater financial and social instability, and reduced output. Having an awareness of inequality and addressing inequalities such as developing DE&I practices is an ethical and business imperative to have a licence to operate.”

Social mobility is a key theme in the asset manager’s own internal DE&I strategy. The company has developed Brightwell Pensions Academy to recruit people of any age and background, with little or no pensions knowledge, to join a year-long structured training programme.

Policy in action

Brightwell has developed a pillar framework covering portfolio construction, mandates and managers, stewardship,  advocacy and sustainability. Expertise BTPS benefited from in a number of ways last year.

For example, Brightwell has supported BTPS gather net zero data and improve climate reporting, including investment in new tools to improve collation and consistency of manager reporting on sustainability. It has helped the pension fund develop a new sustainability dashboard to improve portfolio and manager monitoring.

It has also represented the pension fund on the ASCOR project, an important initiative to improve sovereign climate reporting, and the Asset Owner Diversity Charter which promotes diversity, equity and inclusion in the investment industry.

Brightwell’s first sustainability report identifies the “critical enablers” that will support sustainability including people, processes and partnerships. The report also highlights the company’s commitment to positive real-world impact.

“What we do has a real-world impact, and we can positively influence the way business is conducted to reduce negative externalities. Our scale and governance mean we can be bold, nimble and take a leading position in areas where we feel we can make a difference.”

New Mexico State Investment Council (SIC) the $54 billion sovereign wealth fund, has so much money pouring in from tax and royalty collections on oil and natural gas production in the state that CIO Vince Smith is struggling to put the money to work. The SIC is expecting $5 billion in inflows this year following $8 billion in both 2023 and 2022, and is currently around 10 per cent overweight cash and bonds relative to target.

“We are seeing massive capital coming into our funds,” says Smith in an interview with Top1000funds.com from the SIC’s Santa Fe offices. “We are getting satisfactory yields in the bond market and 5 per cent on our cash, which isn’t damaging returns. But our large cash allocation is due to the large inflows, not by strategic choice.”

Assets under management at the SIC which oversees four permanent funds and is America’s third largest sovereign wealth fund, have grown from $13 billion when Smith joined 14 years ago and are forecast to hit $100 billion in the next 10 years.

The fund’s models suggest that inflows will meet SIC’s distribution needs to the state, much of which goes on education, for the next decade. This will allow all earnings to stay in the fund and compound. Only as the energy transition gathers pace and weighs on demand for fossil fuels will those numbers drop.

In a reflection of the fund’s growth, the internal team is also expanding. A new budget has just approved five additional positions in the investment department which will grow to 18 with three new analysts, an investment operations manager, and a cash manager to oversee the fund’s cash management program.

“We’ve had a team of 13 since the fund was $13 billion assets under management. To be honest, we’ve only just caught up,” says Smith.

Over valued equities

One of the reasons it is challenging putting the money to work is because of valuations in public equity. Smith believes public equity is highly valued across the board, and he is wary of the enduring dominance of tech stocks.

He uses three to four measures to value the portfolio, including the cyclically adjusted price earning (CAPE) ratio and Warren Buffett’s ‘Buffett Indicator’ that compares the total market capitalization of all US stocks with the quarterly output of the US economy.

“All the measures we use tell us that we are paying a lot, particularly relative to higher interest rates. When the Fed was at zero on the Fed Funds rate and 10-year Treasuries were 2.5 per cent, there was a case that stock markets should be highly valued. But now rates on cash are 5.4 per cent and we are seeing 4.3-4.5 per cent on the 10-year, and these valuations are a lot more challenging.”

The US election in November could be a source of welcome volatility that opens the door to deploying more to equity.

“Volatility would help us right now because we’ve got excess cash and bonds because of our inflows – volatility in the stock market would definitely be helpful for us.”

Strategies in public equity are mostly plain vanilla with a small (1.5 per cent) tracking error. The tracking error for the international portfolio is 3 per cent.

Smith employs a macro, top-down medium-term (7-10 year) strategy to guide asset-allocation and asset-class construction. He’ll publish this year’s annual investment plan in August, and predicts the next few years will be “interesting.”

For now, the surprising strength of the US economy prevails in a trajectory that wrong footed investors poised for recession at the beginning of 2023 and those that forecast six to seven rate cuts at the beginning of 2024.

“Here we are, seven months into 2024, and we haven’t had any rate cuts and the expectation is for just one or two. The US labour market is strong; stocks are doing better than expected and higher interest rates are earning good returns on the fund’s cash.”

Private markets

It’s no easier putting money to work in private markets. New Mexico targets 50 per cent of assets in private markets and allows five years to reach its target asset allocation in a pacing program run in-house.

The allocation to private equity and venture is below target, an underweight Smith attributes to the SIC slowing investment in 2019 and 2021. Aggressive fund raising between 2021 and 2023 means many fund managers have now slowed down on raising new funds. It’s one reason why he is expanding the manager roster, hunting for new relationships able to take large investments of $100 million plus in private equity and $300 million in private credit.

He is particularly focused on building the allocation to venture as a proportion of private equity, targeting 15 per cent of total AUM in venture. Strategy will centre on avoiding the riskier end, and careful manager selection, he says.

“We didn’t have much in venture and we are now putting more focus on this and expanding the allocation. For us it’s a matter of staying in the middle of our band and getting the allocation up over the next three to four years.”

Allocations to private equity, real estate, real return and private credit have a strong focus on US dollar-denominated, US-based assets.

New Mexico first began investing in private credit in 2021 and focuses on fund investment and direct investments with managers.

The IMF recently flagged risks in the $1.7 trillion market, warning that rapid growth in the asset class hasn’t been tested in a downturn, and questioning the impact of sudden demands on funds’ liquidity and the quality of underlying borrowers. Smith predicts investors will ultimately put as much to work in private credit as they have in private equity and says SIC strategy is on a sure footing.

“We deal with the larger, established managers and feel we have adequate transparency in the funds we commit to. We stay away from the riskier corners, and don’t expose ourselves to higher risk strategies,” he says.

 

A long-awaited review of Sweden’s buffer funds has proposed consolidating AP1, AP3 and AP4 into two funds.

Stating that the “advantages outweigh the disadvantages,” Tord Gransbo, an adviser to Sweden’s Ministry of Finance working on the review since last October, argued that consolidation would create efficiencies and scale, effectively managing the capital in the long term for a higher net return.

The many similarities of the three Stockholm-based funds (AP2 is based in Gothenburg) include their gradual move towards comparable asset allocations, assets under management (between $44 and 47 billion each) and increased co-investment. Moreover, Gransbo noted that they employ similar numbers of staff in the same job categories and compete against each other for sought-after staff.

In other shared seams, the funds have deepened cooperation on environmental and ethical issues through the Council on Ethics.

“The high degree of similarity means that there are good opportunities to achieve economies of scale in asset management through consolidation or mandatory administrative cooperation,” states the report, in Swedish.

“The consolidation proposal has a much greater potential to improve the conditions for efficient, rational and effective management of the buffer capital and thereby contribute to a higher net return in the long term.”

Gransbo flagged the complex process around consolidation would incur considerable direct costs and significant implementation risks that could impact returns.

The report did explore the benefits of greater cooperation (rather than consolidation) between the Stockholm funds. This would create cost efficiencies and reduce the risks that come with consolidation. However, Gransbo noted that the consolidation proposal carries a significantly greater potential to improve management of the buffer capital, which would, in the long run, contribute to a higher net return.

The report did not single out any of the three funds as a candidate to be split up. The report will now be consulted on, and the all-party Pensions Group will decide the actual shape of any changes to the system.

“We will now read very carefully and analyse the proposal and will of course assist in the formal consultation process that will soon commence,” a spokesperson for AP4 said.

“It is good and natural to regularly review the management of the public pension system’s buffer capital, and we welcome the fact that “Pensionsgruppen” has started to review how the pension system can be developed and strengthened.”

In addition, the report proposes changing the structure of the AP Funds’ boards, highlighting a possible reduction in board members and the requirement of specific skills.

AP6 benefits

Grasbo said his preference is to maintain the current organizational structure of small, private equity specialist AP6.However, he suggested AP6 should be integrated into the wider buffer fund system.

“The Sixth AP Fund has not been integrated into the buffer fund system. It is high time that this happened,” he said.

AP6 chief executive officer Katarina Staaf said the review points out that the expertise of AP6 should be scaled up and that AP6 should be fully integrated to the Swedish buffer system.

“One way of doing this, according to the review, is to remove today’s legal requirement of currency hedges, to allow inflows and outflows linked to the pension system and to open for AP6 to be enabled to borrow from The Swedish National Debt Office [Riksgälden], who is the central government financial manager,” Staff said.

“All are necessary changes that we welcome.”

 

Investment strategy at Seattle City Employees’ Retirement System (SCERS), is guided by an overwhelming focus on long term assets. Hedge funds and commodities are out and cash – not a risk-free asset for a long-term investor – is kept to a minimum. Instead, perpetual equity, long term fixed income and real assets are in, accounting for a combined three quarters of the $4.1 billion portfolio.

“The takeaway is that those of us with long-lived liabilities like pension funds, benefit from being invested in long-lived assets like equities, real assets and long-dated bonds and should leave the short-lived assets like cash, intermediate bonds and hedge funds to those with short-lived liabilities,” says SCERS’ CIO Jason Malinowski in an interview with Top1000Funds.

Malinowski calls the strategy liability aware investment and dates the approach at SCERS to a board request six years ago that the investment team think more about the liabilities when assessing risk and performance. It fired the starting gun on a conceptual and analytical framework, followed by an  incrementalist approach that is still not complete.

In the intervening years events like the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) have built on Malinowski’s faith in the strategy. He uses the travails of SVB to illustrate what can go wrong when an organisation’s assets and liabilities are structurally misaligned. In this case, SVB’s substantial holdings of long-term bonds – which suffered crippling losses when interest rates rose – and short-term deposits.

“SVB failed to balance long-lived assets and short-lived liabilities when the opportunity cost of capital increased,” he explains.

It’s the exact opposite for pensions. “For pension funds, liabilities are long term and members can’t withdraw their funds. If they invest in short term assets like hedge funds and credit they have the opposite asset liability mismatch that is exposed if the opportunity cost of capital falls.”

He says the strategy involves a shift from thinking about risk and performance of the investment portfolio to the risk and performance of the total plan. SCERS’ liabilities are discounted according to expected returns, and the team need to understand the relationship between investment performance and changes in expected returns.

“We needed to switch our focus from asset volatility to funded status volatility.”

Hedge funds and core bonds

In 2019, Malinowski eliminated hedge funds, re-allocating money to equity and infrastructure. Last year he went a step further, trimming the allocation to core bonds in favour of a new 5 per cent allocation to long term bonds.

While many CIOs enthusiastically endorse hedge funds’ uncorrelated returns, particularly when bonds and equities fell in tandem in 2022, Malinowski believes he can find enough diversification between stocks, bonds and long-term real assets to override the need for hedge funds.

“Hedge funds do not have a role in a portfolio that funds long term liabilities,” he says.

Moreover, as a liability aware investor, plummeting stocks and bonds in 2022 were not a source of alarm.

“I had a different view of what happened in 2022. We saw negative asset performance, but it was also a period when expected returns were increasing – bond yields were increasing, and earnings yields also increased. Our assets fell for sure, but our liabilities were also falling because expected returns increased, and this made the pension maths work again.”

Liability aware investment also means Seattle loses out on bold allocations to star performing assets like private credit where SCERS’ small allocation is capped, but other investors continue to flock.

But Malinowski is happy with a limited exposure. He reasons that one of the biggest risks with private credit for investors with long lived liabilities is re-investment risk. “When we get our principal and income back after 3-5 years we will have to reinvest it into new credit allocations. But this is subject to the market environment at the time which could have lower interest rates and lower credit spreads,” he says.

Background to the strategy

The strategy has similarities to LDI – like a focus on the whole plan rather than just the investment portfolio, and funded status volatility rather than asset volatility. However, LDI liabilities are discounted based on long bonds and in a liability aware portfolio, all long-term assets are attractive because they align with long term liabilities.

“Yes, we like long bonds, but we also like equities because they are perpetual, and real assets like real estate and infrastructure.”

He says the strategy does not cut fees dramatically. SCERS’ long-term fixed income allocation is in passive treasuries, but the fees from the equity and real asset allocation are still high. “With 30 per cent in private markets we do have meaningful fees. This was not an exercise in minimising fees.”

The strategy doesn’t use leverage in the bond portfolio and is straightforward to implement, something that is important because it helps weather any storms. He is mindful of liquidity and the need to pay benefits, but says SCERS’ doesn’t need huge amounts of liquidity on hand. “You need to be aware of how much liquidity you can take, but our outflows are modest. Liquidity isn’t a meaningful constraint for our portfolio.”

Malinowski fields regular enquiries from peer CIOs  interested to know more. Many of their questions centre on how he got board approval and how the fund first initiated changes in its asset liability study to switch to long-term asset classes. He finds the process useful since it tests what SCERS has put in place – and it also reassures him that SCERS hasn’t strayed too far from peers.

“I am focused on how different we are  [to other funds],” he concludes.

 

 

 

Two themes dominate strategy in CalPERS’ $72.6 billion private equity portfolio as it gets back on course after an infamous lost decade of missed performance: co-investment; and reducing the bias to buy-out.

Co-investment, favoured for its structural alpha and dramatic savings compared to traditional fund investment, now accounts for 40 per cent of the portfolio. In marked contrast to the previous two decades when CalPERS prioritised large allocations to funds, in 2023 the majority of the pension fund’s private equity commitments were in co-investment which could, predicted Anton Orlich, managing investment director of the portfolio, save the pension fund $25 billion over the next ten years.

“Each $1 billion of co investment results in a $400 million saving thanks to not paying GP management fees and profit share. One third of those savings are made on the front end of the investment, and two thirds at the back end, meaning that the saving accelerates through the portfolio,” he said, speaking in a recent board meeting.

Nor does co-investment just lower fees. Orlich told the board that it had helped CalPERS develop its brand and trust with GPs, supporting key relationships so that the pension fund can still access investments, even when managers are oversubscribed.

“There is so much emphasis on cost saving within co-investment that governance gets overlooked,” he said.

CalPERS has increased its allocation to co-investment despite a tough climate in the asset class. The lack of deal flow and exits has knocked into new co-investment opportunities. “As the level of M&A declines, there are fewer co-investment opportunities,” he said.

Another important benefit of the co-investment programme is that it has avoided the build-up of large unfunded commitments. Co-investment has increased cash demand (which jumped from $3 billion to $9 billion in 2023) because commitments go straight into the ground. But Orlich espoused the benefits of quickly putting money to work over fund investments where GPs often delay capital calls and leave LPs at risk of meeting unfunded commitments in challenging markets.

The portfolio is cash flow negative because deal activity is slow, and CalPERS is seeing very little in the way of realised gains coming back into the portfolio. However, the lack of cash flowing back is impacting CalPERS less than others.

“It affects us less because of our under allocation during the current harvesting years,” Orlich says.

He predicts CalPERS will continue to deploy more than it gets back for another four years. Only then will the fund begins harvesting returns that can pay for future investment.

Mega buyout bias comes to an end

For the last two decades, large mega buyout funds dominated CalPERS’ strategy. Over the last two fiscal years, the team have reduced the allocation to buyout from 80 per cent of the portfolio – it used to account for 91 per cent in 2020-21 – to 67 per cent, equivalent to $48.9 billion. The shift has created an opportunity to generate alpha where there is a greater return dispersion across other allocations including growth, opportunistic, credit and venture.

Moreover, within the buyout portfolio, CalPERS is shifting to more mid-market buyout opportunities where managers are less dependent on leverage to generate returns.

But the strategy means manager selection (CalPERS invests with 126 managers and 363 funds) is even more important. Key deployment themes include vintage year consistency, along with a growing ($4 billion) allocation to diverse managers where CalPERS is able to tap into enhanced diversity and return dispersion. Orlich warned that allocating to emerging managers involves even greater emphasis on manager selection because there is more upside and downside.

He is also prioritising  consistent pacing. The team successfully allocated $15.5 billion every year for the last three years. Only with consistent pacing will it possible to achieve the fund’s recently increased goal to allocate 17 per cent of the portfolio to private equity – up from 13 per cent. “Consistency in commitments is important to avoiding another lost decade,” he said.

In another theme, the team have selectively diversified the portfolio geographically over the last two fiscal years. The program is still US centric (U.S. exposure is approximately 75 per cent) but European exposure is approximately 20 per cent.

 

Staff at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, the $247.5 billion global asset owner, come into the office at least three days a week. Although some come in four, or even five days, the investor hopes its new downtown Toronto offices will encourage people to spend more time on site.

It is also the type of premises that will help lure top talent to the pension fund, explains George Konidis, managing director, Real Estate & Workplace Transformation, OTPP, who led the dramatic renovation of the landmark building.

Since the pandemic, we have proved we can work effectively from home. And mandates that compel staff to show up more regularly at the office are often unpopular – although banks are taking a much tougher stance, stepping up enforcement of days required in the office.

Konidis believes OTPP’s new offices will boost human connection and creativity and show the office in a new light, bringing people together in a different way.

“Our new workplace experience fosters the need for collaboration, networking, mentoring and productivity,” he says.

“We have invested in our teams by providing a space that enables a successful workplace experience while also giving people the flexibility to work from anywhere.  We’re pleased with what we’ve achieved.”

Flexibility and choice

The emphasis on flexibility and choice in work styles stand out as one of the building’s key features. OTPP’s new offices have tech-enabled work seats, lounge seating, collaboration seating, meeting rooms, cafés, lounges, quiet rooms, focused workspaces and amenities to support individual needs in the workplace.

Staff can work in different workspaces to suit their individual business needs and workstyle preferences, he explains. “The aim is to further elevate well-being and productivity by providing spaces that match how people want to work and the type of work that they will be doing.”

A suite of technology tools and solutions give employees the ability to work effortlessly from anywhere in the office and the range of rooms are designed to improve meeting equity by making the experience the same for participants in person and online via new, hybrid first meeting experiences, says Konidis.

“When we made the decision to create a brand-new workspace and head office, we were looking at and planning how we could drive an elevated workplace experience. We are proud to have created a space that reflects our culture and emphasizes sustainability, inclusion and well-being and one that, we see, will motivate employees and increase productivity.”

The investment teams can use the conference level floor and meeting space “to dial-up the experience when they are hosting meetings and events,” says Konidis. “Having the ability to elevate the in-person experience, coupled with being centrally located in downtown Toronto, will certainly be beneficial.”

He adds that the new office will also help attract top talent.

“We see the in-office experience – especially when a physical space can reflect an organization’s culture and draw-in priority elements to our teams like wellness, sustainability, and amenities – playing a vital role in attracting and retaining talent.

We took the time to speak with employees and understand what they were looking for in a workspace. The outcome was an amenity-rich space with sustainability, inclusivity, wellness and flexibility embedded in its design.”