The meeting on 9 December 2024 was of the Royal Borough of Greenwich Pension Board. The Board were scheduled to receive training from Blackrock on investment management and to review reports on a range of topics. These included reports on the performance of the fund's investments, the administration of the fund and its communication policy.

Training - Financial Markets & Product Knowledge

The Board was scheduled to receive training on financial markets and product knowledge from Tamryn Rowlands, Keerat Chana and Ellie Emmett of Blackrock.¹ The training was to be followed by a paper-based quiz.

Fund Manager Performance

The Board was scheduled to review a report on the investment performance of the fund for the period to 30 September 2024, which was prepared by the fund's investment consultants Hymans Robertson.² The report pack notes some of the key financial indicators for the period, including that:

Over Q3 2024, the overall Fund’s assets grew by circa £24.6m from £1,681.40m to £1,706m.

The report pack goes on to describe the performance of each of the fund's investments in detail, broken down by asset class. It states that overall

the total assets (excluding Private Equity with Wilshire and Cash funds) delivered a return of 1.3% over the quarter, underperforming the overall benchmark of 1.6%. Over the 12-month period to 30 September 2024, the total assets outperformed, delivering a return of 10.9% against a benchmark of 9.1%.

Pension Fund Administration

The Board was also scheduled to review a report on the administration of the Pension Fund. This report included an update on the impact of the 'McCloud Judgement', which found that transitional arrangements included in the 2015 reforms to the UK Government's pension schemes unlawfully discriminated against younger members. This lead to the introduction of the 'McCloud remedy' in 2023, which will require many people's pension benefits to be recalculated. The report notes that

This is a substantial project that has stretched our already limited resources and will continue to do so during the 2024/2025 scheme year.

It then goes on to describe how the team is managing this substantial piece of work.

The report then goes on to describe the work that the team has been doing on the Pension Dashboard, which is a UK Government project to allow people to view all of their pensions in one place.

The report then goes on to describe the other work that the pensions team has been doing, including a data cleansing exercise, upgrading their pension system, and moving towards using the iConnect data interface for more of the organisations that pay into the fund.

Pension Fund Communication Policy Statement

The Board was scheduled to review the Royal Borough of Greenwich Pension Fund Communications Policy Statement, which describes how the Council aims to communicate with:

• Scheme Members
• Prospective Members
• Scheme Employers
• Prospective Employers
• Trade Union and other scheme member representatives

It sets out how the Council plans to communicate, how often, and what it will communicate about. The policy includes the commitment to

As soon as resources allow, to issue a newsletter to all staff – members and non-members of the scheme.

It also includes information about the General Data Protection Regulations, noting that:

The Royal Borough of Greenwich has a duty to protect personal information and will process personal data in accordance with GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.