Merseyside Pension Fund scoops top pension awards

Merseyside Pension Fund has won three awards at the 2019 Investment & Pensions Europe (IPE) awards in Copenhagen.

 

IPE has been rewarding excellence in Europe’s highly diverse and innovative pensions industry for 19 years and its awards are considered the most prestigious of their type. 

 

In 2019 a total of 434 entries were received across 43 categories: 

 

To fulfil its objective of aligning its responsible investment policy and activities with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, Merseyside Pension Fund considered options for capturing both the risks and opportunities arising from climate change.

 

The outcome is the creation of a new smart sustainability fund – the FTSE All-World Climate Balanced Comprehensive Factor index – which provides the scheme, and other like-minded institutional investors, with an investable, risk-efficient means of achieving its TFCD decarbonization goals.

 

“Fantastic work regarding TCFD reporting and setting a climate related benchmark. Those are truly exceptional pillars for activity”

 

 

As its membership profile has matured, the Fund has sought to increase the income it generates. Strategically, this is reflected in the increase in its allocation from lower yielding assets to assets such as core infrastructure. It is also seen in the refocusing of its opportunities portfolio from a ‘catch-all’ portfolio to an opportunistic credit portfolio.

This credit portfolio is intended to deliver higher levels of income from a similar level of assets. Although opportunistic credit is a move up the risk spectrum, MPF has sought to identify niche areas of the credit market where, through illiquidity, complexity, scarcity or a combination of all, higher returns can be generated without taking on commensurately more risk.

 

“Interesting, somewhat differentiated approach, delivering solid returns with evidence of privileged access to the asset class”

 

 

The Fund has implemented a factor investing model that, it believes, allows for the flexibility to consider diverse investment approaches and methodologies that are appropriate to the scheme’s objectives.

 

“Others implement efficient and convincing solutions, but MPF’s could be useful to the entire industry, and this is already a great achievement”.

 

Merseyside Pension Fund is also delighted to have been highly commended in the following two categories: