News

We are delighted to have won the Innovation Award at LAPF Investments Awards 2020.

Like other pools, we adopted a multi-manager approach to fund construction, to deliver the strongest possible risk-adjusted returns while achieving significant savings. However, this award recognises we made a significant step in innovation, adopting an “Enhanced Portfolio Implementation” (EPI) framework within our equity funds.

Managed by Russell Investments (within our ACS fund structure hosted by Link Fund Solutions), EPI brings the implementation of multiple equity manager portfolios into one holistic portfolio. Whilst new to LGPS, this leverages proven technology and has two significant benefits for our host authorities:

1. Meaningful cost savings over and above the manager fee savings already achieved;
2. Improved Governance from an ESG perspective: we have taken steps to lower our carbon exposure by an additional ~25% without impacting manager alpha. This is hugely powerful in supporting our administering authorities’ work towards their decarbonisation goals.

Not only has this been powerful for our members, but we believe this step also demonstrates that LGPS pooling can go beyond manager fee negotiations, accessing a second tier of cost saving and improved governance.