Imerys Pension Scheme hires fiduciary manager
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The Imerys UK Pension Fund Trustees have appointed a fiduciary manager, citing increasing regulation and investment risk.
The sponsor of the £550m UK pension fund is Imerys Minerals Ltd, part of a French multinational, which produces and processes industrial minerals. The UK scheme has nearly 5,900 members.
The trustees hired their existing actuary and investment adviser Aon for the fiduciary management brief, having run a tender process.
"As trustee to the Imerys scheme, we had eight investment managers, and it became clear that the time and resources required to effect a dynamic investment policy without an in-house investment team was becoming more and more onerous in a world of increasing regulation and investment risk,” said Edwin Bruce-Gardner from trustee firm Vidett, who chairs the scheme.
“After presentations on different approaches from several fiduciary managers, we decided to stay with Aon, which has successfully advised us for many years and which we considered to be the best fit,” he added.
Since 2019, pension funds are required to run competitive tenders for fiduciary management where this covers 20% or more of their assets, after the Competition and Markets Authority found evidence of investment consultants ‘flipping’ clients to their more lucrative fiduciary management offerings without trustees seeking other quotes.
The recent gilts panic has convinced more trustees that they might be unable to respond to market developments rapidly enough under their existing governance models. A number of larger funds have recently moved to outsourced chief investment officers, including the pension funds of companies like BAE Systems, Kier Group and Northumbrian Water.
Aon’s head of UK investment, Maria Johannessen, said: “We have worked with the Imerys Scheme for over a decade, and it’s great news that we can capitalise on the understanding of the scheme’s needs and objectives that we have built up over that time. Our aim is to provide more certainty, lessen the decision-making burden and provide better value to the scheme. All this will also ensure continuity and stability for members and allow the scheme to navigate new forms of volatility with confidence.”
