Investing for outcomes
Aviva Investors
On 5 November 2015, Aviva Investors brought together senior pension professionals for an exclusive half-day forum at the Shangri-La Hotel at the Shard.
Over the course of the day, they focused on how asset managers are working with pension schemes to achieve the meaningful outcomes needed from investments, with a specific focus on strategies that meet the cash-flow requirements of liabilities.
Research undertaken by Gabriel on behalf of Aviva Investors among such professionals informed some of the content for this event and the full findings of the research programme revealed how pension schemes are evolving their approach to investment to meet their obligations to members: increasing allocations to alternative income sources such as infrastructure and real estate debt, moving away from the traditional asset mix to invest in multi-strategy solutions designed to limit the impact of market volatility. This approach, in the words of one respondent "gives managers a broad range of assets from which to achieve a target return profile, whether it be income or growth", and which in turn "gives them much more ability to use their skills and effectively play between the silos" to reach the outcomes desired.
Gabriel delivered an end-to-end service: designing the research programme, recruiting respondents, executing the research and writing the report to provide insights and original content in support of Aviva Investors’ institutional marketing and thought leadership strategy.
Commenting on the findings, Mark Versey, Chief Investment Officer, Global Investment Solutions, Aviva Investors, said: "Rather than looking at LDI independently from growth portfolios, we think it is right for pension schemes to consider an outcome-oriented approach. This replaces a two-portfolio model and the extensive use of individual indices to measure performance that this entails and instead uses a single portfolio model and a much more meaningful benchmark: the scheme’s actual liabilities. This enables trustees to consider risks taken on interest rates and inflation in the same context as risks taken on equities, real estate, alternatives and all other market risks in meeting future liabilities, and changes can be implemented far more quickly and meaningfully."
