Brunel selects Colmore for private markets admin support
LGPS pool Brunel Pension Partnership has appointed investment technology firm Colmore to provide administration services to its private markets team.
Colmore will supply middle and back office services following an OJEU procurement tender launched in July.
The three-year contract will cover the pool’s six strategies within its private market portfolios – private equity, private debt, infrastructure, property, secured income and hedge funds.
Richard Fanshawe, head of private markets at Brunel, said: “Colmore provided us with the most economically advantageous and comprehensive tender and have truly demonstrated their ability and willingness to collaborate with us fully on this venture.”
The firm will provide quarterly fee transparency and validation reports on every fund held by clients of the pool, including pre-existing investments, he said.
This will help Brunel meet its cost transparency obligations, “shining a light on the traditionally opaque pricing of private markets,” Fanshawe said.
In addition, Colmore is expected to provide deal lifecycle management, data management, portfolio monitoring and reporting services.
Ben Cook, chief executive of Colmore, said: “The best part of our job is supporting clients who are committed to innovation and transparency.
“Brunel leads the way with their vision for private market investing, and it is a privilege to support their entire private market portfolio.”
Transparency of reporting by pension pools has been a hot topic of debate among Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) funds over recent months.
In May, Andrien Meyers, head of treasury and pensions at London Borough of Lambeth, called on all LGPS pools to sign up to a transparency code designed to help individual funds make better investments.
He said: “In a pooling world, the manager doesn’t report to the fund, they report to the pool.
“So, when a manager completes the template, they are completing it for all the funds they look after for the pool.
“That doesn’t help me as a fund. I don’t want to know manager A looks after x billion for the pool, and we have completed the template for x billion.”
So far, only half of the eight LGPS funds – Brunel, Border to Coast, Local Pensions Partnership and LGPS Central – have signed up to the code, which was launched in May 2017 by the LGPS Scheme Advisory Board.
Karen Shackleton, senior adviser at investment advice firm MJ Hudson Allenbridge, said there were several reasons some of the pools have not yet signed up.
“The first might be that they simply haven’t had time to give this their attention yet. I know many pool officers who are working long hours to deliver to their member funds, at the moment.
“The second reason might be that, since the pools are covering all asset classes, they have been waiting for the template for private assets to be published so that they can be sure they can meet all the necessary criteria.
“The third reason could be that there are internal teams managing the assets and it is taking time to meet all the transparency criteria.”
She added that pools such as the Welsh pool, with an outsourced solution, may expect their outsourced provider to sign up on their behalf.
Separately this week, Brunel published its 39-page stewardship policy document, which outlines its strategy for influencing the environmental, social and governance behaviours of companies in which it holds shares.
Last month, it awarded two mandates within its secured income portfolio on behalf of three funds.
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