Transcript

Good evening, everyone. My name is Liam Olyph. I'm the clerk for tonight's pensioners board. Before we begin, we need to elect a chair and vice chair for the 2025-2026 municipal year. Do members of the board agree to appoint Councillor Ashok Patel as chair and Councillor Nikos Souslous as vice chair? Okay, if that's agreed, I'll pass you over to Councillor Ashok Patel. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Welcome to tonight's pension board. My name is Councillor Ashok Patel, chair of the committee. Before we begin, there are some housekeeping points to cover. The meeting is being streamed on YouTube by taking part in your consenting to be recorded. Please can officers introduce themselves before speaking for the first time, and would everyone please use their microphones? There are tea, coffee and biscuits available in the staff kitchen next to the reception, and the toilets are on the left-hand side. You will need your security badge to get into the kitchen and other office areas. If the fire alarm sounds, either continuously or intermittently, I will adjourn the meeting. Please leave the meeting in an orderly fashion by the staff fire exit, which is behind me to the right. Officers will direct you to the assembly point in Riverside Gardens. So, can we now proceed with the agenda? Are there any apologies for absence? There are apologies from Andy Sharp, chair. I have also received a note that David Hughes may join us, either in person or remotely, during the meeting. Sorry, chair. David is actually unable to join today. Do members have any declarations of interest? Item 4, minutes of the previous meeting. Do the members approve the open minutes of the meetings which was held on the 12th of February, 2025? Approved. Minutes of the previous Pension Fund Committee. Do members note the open and exempt minutes of the Pension Fund Committee meeting on the 5th of March? Yep. Right. So, we're on to Item 6, Key Performance Indicators. Can I ask Eleanor Dennis to briefly introduce the item, please? Thank you, chair. Eleanor Dennis, Head of Pensions for Hamilton and Fulham. So, this paper sets out the key performance indicators for LPPA for quarter four period, January to March 2025, inclusive. So, LPPA processed an increased number of cases in quarter four. The highlights include continued improvements to active deferred retirements, as well as bereavements. And most cases were processed well above the 95% target. I welcome any questions. Are there any questions? Well, firstly, can I, Eleanor, congratulate everyone concerned about the positive performance. We seem to have improved in every area, from retirement states, transfers, to refunds. The only slightest point was refunds, where there was a reduction from 97.6 to 97.7. Is there a, sorry, increase? Is there any reason for that? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. It's a minimal increase. I think it shows more because we have a relatively no number of cases compared to larger funds and other clients that LPPA service. It would simply be a reallocation of resource. So, where the numbers of cases processed had increased, they would need to divert resources to that particular area, such as retirements or bereavements, in order to make sure that majority of cases are processed in time and continue that successive improved SLA. So, that would have just meant cases like refunds were slightly less processed on time. Just clarify for me what the refunds belong to, assuming there was some sort of overpayment in the past for a refund. Thank you for the question, Chair. So, in terms of refunds, this is where an individual will have either less than three months service and will be refunded via their payroll and will just have to process the form to say that they will have no liability in the scheme. Or they may well be deferred members that actually have less service and we're refunding them direct to themselves. So, these are individuals that have no liability in the scheme and therefore we refund them on their contributions only. The employer contributions remain within the fund in order to pay our liabilities to existing members and beneficiaries. Thank you, again, on behalf of the committee, well done, and I'm glad that all the KPIs have been met. Can I ask the committee members to note the report? Noted, yeah. Item 7, Pensions Administration Update. Again, can I ask Eleanor to briefly introduce the item? Thank you, Chair. So, this paper sets out a summary of pension operations activity in the fund. The LPPA helped us saw 54 more calls in Quarter 4 than Quarter 3. There also seem to be fluctuations in the member satisfaction whereby feedback remains low. LPPA are investigating this and to try and understand the trends behind that, but we're still awaiting the outcomes of those investigations. We do have auto moment taking place on the 1st of August for those members that are not in the scheme or in the 50-50 element of the scheme. And certainly my team are more busy than usual with consulting with members on retirement. So, very busy time on the fund. Welcome any questions. I'll give you a question. Thank you, Eleanor. And it's very good to see, I think, over the years we've looked, especially at the help desk and the waiting times. It's good to see how low and continuously improving they are. I just had a question on the satisfaction service because it just wasn't clear from the paragraph there about the percentage reporting satisfaction as opposed to dissatisfaction and what the trend is. I understand the take-up is low, so it's a bit, the numbers maybe don't make sense anyway, but it just wasn't clear from here exactly what the percentage of the breakdown is. Thank you, Chair. Sorry, thank you, Councillor Zuzalos. So, in terms of quarter four, they had eight responses. And of those eight responses, 87.5% were satisfied, so seven were satisfied. But they actually sent out, they actually processed 33 cases, 30 surveys, so it's sort of seven out of the 30 that were issued were satisfied. So it's very low numbers. And so there's not much we can read into that because of the low take-up. What it means is of those that did responded, most responded because they were satisfied, so that's a positive. But actually, there's more work that needs to be done in terms of making sure that LPPA are able to get more responses and actually delve a little bit deeper. So what is that measure of satisfaction? What else are people, those that are unsatisfied or the 22 that didn't respond? What is their reason? Are they the ones that were delayed? Are they the ones that had to, had some to-ing and fro-ing in terms of sending documents in or incomplete forms? That's the level of analysis that I've asked LPPA to bring to us going forward. Good. Thank you very much. A follow-up question? Yeah. Any questions? I've got one about McLeod. Is this appropriate time? Yeah. Just wondered, have, or when will people be told that they've might be affected by the McLeod judgment? And are future or current retirees being informed? I think there's a choice that they would make about whether to go for sort of one scheme or the other. Thank you, Mr. O'Connell. So members that, that we know of that are affected by McLeod have been told, they have been notified. Um, but there's still some work to do, um, at those that, for example, have, have deceased or, or, or, and that would affect the beneficiaries benefits or indeed those that are deferred. Um, so, so we still don't have full visibility of, of those that are affected. They won't be given a choice. It will be a calculation that's done versus the two and whichever is most generous to the member will result in, in those benefits being paid on that basis. Um, but, but it's a, it's a good question. So, so no member will be worse off. It, what they won't have to make a complicated decision. It will be whatever is more, more generous for the, for the individual, but there's some retrospective work to be done in terms of those that, that may have transferred out or, or indeed deceased and the beneficiaries are receiving, uh, a dependence benefit. Um, therefore they'll be recalculated and reimbursed, um, if it was found that they were better off and should have been calculated on the final salary basis. Yes, I, I, I've got three questions. Uh, and at a firstly, paragraph 12, overpayments totaling 39,647 pounds 59 pence have been written off in quarter four. And that's a huge amount of money. Uh, can imagine what we could do with that money if you had to spend it on other services. Can you tell us more about that? Thank you, chair. So the overpayments, um, relate to, uh, bereavement cases, legacy bereavement cases, whereby we have worked with our administrators, whether that be LPPA or previous administrators, um, or this under the Surrey County Council umbrella to recover the monies, uh, over several years. Um, and, um, and, um, outside of five years, we have to write it off. We don't have the option to continually chase that money. Um, once, once after that five year period has lapsed, we have to write it off. We can't disturb the individual's beneficiaries to, to recall that money. And so that would have been the scenarios with these cases. We, we, we use, uh, tracing companies. We, uh, we, uh, write to the next of kin. We, um, work with, uh, our previous administrators and any, if there's a spouse, we, who's in, in receipt of a benefit, we would ask her to deduct the, the, the arrears in respect of the overpayment. But if it's over five years, we have a legal obligation to write that money off. And so it's in those instances that total the 39,000 pounds. I mean, I, I, I accept that five years is a long time to collect the money. My understanding is the legal position is that if, uh, there's a bereavement, then the, he's, the, the estate, the, the, the deceased person's falls into the estate of the deceased, and it's administered by an executor, the best way of getting any sort of refunds would be to write to the executor, wouldn't it? And say, look, uh, this person has passed away. Um, there's been benefits which have been claimed. Can we please get that paid out of the estate? Thank you, Chair. But that's, that's, that's, that's absolutely correct. And we do do that. But, um, um, often the solicitor is no longer working on behalf of that estate, um, and the beneficiaries or doesn't respond or is abroad. Um, we have, we have cases where we don't have a death certificate. So we don't actually, we're aware through the government agencies that an individual has passed, but don't actually have any contact details despite tracing. You're absolutely right in terms of the term lapse. But in death cases, that's not a long time because obviously there's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between individuals whereby there is a time lapse because individuals are grieving. And so it does take longer to obtain information. What I will say is that, um, going forward, we have, uh, quite a robust system in place for current cases whereby we're much quicker to identify an overpayment where possible and, and, and work to recover those monies as soon as possible. Uh, and we work with our administrators and tracing companies to do that, to identify return funds or, or, um, for overseas individuals. We do an annual, um, existence exercise whereby members that are receiving benefits that live abroad have to physically report to, uh, Western Union office to show that they're, that they're still alive. They're still alive and therefore the benefits will continue. Otherwise they're suspended until such time as they make contact. So we do have systems in place to minimize the risk of these write-offs, but unfortunately these are for periods, um, well outside the, the five year period. Sorry, in my humble opinion, can I just make a small suggestion, which might be useful, which is to, if the monies are being paid into a bank, perhaps the bank should be notified, uh, that there is a pension being paid into the account. Uh, because as soon as someone passes away, the bank will normally freeze the bank account. And that will actually be an alarm bell to the local authority. That's, that is what's happened, even if the beneficiaries don't come forward. It's simply a suggestion. Thank you, Chair. The second question I wanted to ask you was about the, uh, the pension dashboard, which is going to come into, uh, it's going to come live in October, 2025. How, how would that help matters? Sorry, Chair, can I ask for clarification there? Is that with regard to the bereavements or just in general? Just in general. Just in general. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So, so the, the, the dashboard is supposed to be a vehicle set up by, uh, government, but the various companies that provide that platform whereby individuals can access all of their pension information. There's no date set for public access, so it's simply, uh, an onboarding, uh, date for organizations to supply and have ready all of their information in an accessible format. We don't know what that, that date looks like in terms of public access. That could be two, two years away. Um, we haven't had an indication of what that looks like, but it's simply that organizations have made preparations in order that the data is fit to be accessed. To be accessed by individuals that will allow them to trace, um, on forgotten pensions, if you like. Um, so there are billions of pounds worth of, uh, forgotten pensions where people have worked several jobs several years ago, 20, 30 years ago, and they have no recollection of the pension or understanding of how to contact and get access to those funds. And this is a way that, uh, the government feels they will be able to have visibility and access to that because ultimately the government want individuals to provide for their own retirement as opposed to solely replying on the state. Um, and this money is going unclaimed if, if individuals have forgotten about it. So that's the, the, the, the theory behind setting up of the dashboard. It's been successful in some Scandinavian countries and, and, and, um, they want to bring that, uh, to the UK. Thank you. And the last question is, uh, in paragraph two, you refer to some errors, uh, number of errors that require LPEPA to support employers. What, what does that mean? Thank you, chair. So, um, every month employers have to submit data on the individuals that are in the scheme. So their salary, what the corresponding contribution level is, their hours, uh, if they've left, if they're on maternity leave or paternity leave, for example. Um, and some employers struggle to get that in the format that it's required. So they're the errors. Um, and that means that they can be behind. They can be behind in terms of, you know, we're in June now, and they might not have submitted Mays properly because of the errors that it has to be in a set format. That data allows LPPA to have the most up-to-date information on a member to allow them produce the annual benefit statements, for example, or an S an accurate estimate of, of an individual's benefits. So it's really important. We've gone from an annual exercise to monthly exercise in order to minimize the amount of work, the amount of data inaccuracies, and make sure that our data as a fund is the most up-to-date. That helps manage our liabilities and assess, um, our funding level more accurately. And so it's in everybody's interest that that data is up-to-date and accurate. And so the errors are simply, um, that once employers submit that, it's rejecting, um, the format that it's in, or things don't match up in terms of the right salary for the right contribution, etc. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Right. Does the committee note the contents of the report? Yeah. Item eight, pension fund quarterly update. Can I ask Sian Cogley to briefly introduce the item? Thank you, Chair. Uh, Sian Cogley, pension fund manager. In the pack, you will see an update on performance to the quarter ended the 31st of December, 2024. Since the deadline for papers has passed, more recent information has become available. Over the quarter to the 31st of March, 2025, the market value of assets decreased by 19 million to 1.409 billion. The fund has underperformed its benchmark net of fees by 0.05%, delivering an absolute return of minus 1.27% over the quarter. And the fund has delivered a positive return of 3.73% on a net of fees basis over the year to the 31st of March, 2025. On the 15th of January, 2025, officers submitted the pension funds response to the fit to the future consultation, uh, from central government. This has been previously shared with both committee and board as an appendix to a quarterly update. On the 29th of May, 2025, the consultation outcome was released alongside the final report of the pensions investment review, which covers both defined contribution and defined benefit schemes to which the local government pension scheme is the latter. The links to these reports will be circulated as part of the next committee pack, which goes out next week. But if you would like the links shared sooner, I can email them to the board after this meeting. The key fit for the future outcomes in regard to the minimum standards or asset pooling are one, the delegation of the implementation of investment strategies to the pools. Uh, the pool for this fund is the LCIV London collective investment vehicle. The principal advice on investment strategy is to be taken from or through the pool and all assets should be transferred to the pools with a 31st of March, 20, 26 deadline with some flexibility for those who'll be moving pools. Uh, and finally representatives from both Darwin and Aberdeen will be attending the committee meeting on Wednesday, the 25th of June, 2025. I'm aware that the chair has previously attended meetings, the committee, and as queries have been raised in regards to both of these fund managers. Uh, I wanted to highlight the opportunity to attend this as well. Uh, I now welcome any questions or comments in like this update. Thank you. Any questions. I had a question. I don't think it's on this section necessarily, but it's about the, um, equity, the asset allocation. Is that would now be appropriate to talk about that? I noticed that we're sort of 5% over benchmark for equity and we're in very uncertain times. And I wondered whether we still think that's a wise judgment or whether we should be scaling that back. Uh, thank you for your question, Mr. O'Connell. Uh, the, uh, committee will, uh, have always have the option to discuss rebalancing. Uh, so in the 25th of June, Izio will bring it as probably part of the quarterly performance update that they might want to reconsider. However, we are in a triannual valuation year. So as we are currently revaluing the fund, it's likely the investment strategy will be revised at the end of this year. Also with this regulation, uh, mentioned that the pool will be taking over strategies. It's likely that we, uh, now need to wait for the London collective investment vehicle to also, uh, have input to the strategic asset allocation. Uh, yeah, I've got a few questions. Uh, on appendix one, the, the value of the liabilities. Can you just remind me what the liabilities are? Uh, thank you chair. Liabilities are, for example, the pensions due to be paid to pensioners and their, their present value. Um, I'm glad that you're, uh, we're going to have someone from, uh, Darwin and I believe to come to the committee meeting. Thank you very much for organizing that. Um, I've got a couple of questions, which I need to ask you about the other, which is, other fun, which is concerning me is, which is the LCIB global equity. Can we turn to that? Um, that reported, uh, a loss of 0.32 quarter and 0.61 annually. Is that right? Is that correct? Sorry. What was the question? LCIB absolute return. Yeah. So it's 0.59 loss in pot water and 0.1.16 per per Adam. Um, sorry, are you just confirming that that is the case that that performance figures? Yes. Yes. Um, so why, why did it deliver a negative return? Uh, aside from any of the commentary, uh, within the pack, the absolute return fund is a dynamic fund and. Sorry, Pat, could you take it? Yes. Sure. So the performance that you're referring to is against the benchmark and the benchmark for this particular fund is, um, cash plus. Um, I think it's on Sonia as well. Plus, um, a margin. And so when you're in an environment where, where cash as a baseline is doing really well. So your risk free rate is floating around 5% and then you add a margin on top. Um, generally it's quite tricky to, to outperform against that when your investment mandate is simply to not lose any capital. Um, with this particular fund, I mean, benchmarks serve a very useful purpose because, and especially so in a very clear cut equity mandate, for example, because you've got a manager that's trying to outperform. And if the active manager isn't able to outperform the passive index on a consistent basis, then the question is why do you pay a higher fee for that manager with the absolute return fund? Um, it's not as fair a comparison really. And it's, it's quite hard to find, um, a benchmark that is. Uh, so whilst the underperformance is concerning and, and the LSF is monitoring the performance of that fund, um, and is concerned with the performance of that fund. The benchmark for this fund is, is, is a challenging benchmark as a pure comparator, um, because their mandate is simply to invest in any way that they see fit in order to protect capital. Um, that means that they will have a lot of expensive protection in place that they're, they're kind of gearing up to, um, preserve capital in the uncertain times that Mr. O'Connell alluded to in case there was a significant fallback in asset values. In which case they're protection and what is currently the drag on their performance would come into its own. And the capital would be preserved that actually. If they're doing their job properly return positive return in that instance. And then they would be outperforming their benchmark shortly thereafter because interest rates would come down. So. You're right to raise concern with it. Um, and it is being monitored and the role of that fund is under review as well across all partner funds. It's a conversation that LCRV is having with partner funds to see what the original idea for the holding this fund in the strategic asset allocation was and whether funds feel that it's still doing that job properly. With a view of perhaps reallocating that capital to something else in this new regime where we do have a higher risk free rate and perhaps parking that money in a fixed income allocation instead. Um, but that's, that's sort of the reason why the underperformance against the benchmark, it's a tricky benchmark to outperform for this fund. I, I, I, I can, I can see in the commentary that the asset manager is a water and it says that the manager failed to fully take part in short term global profits animating from Trump's presidential victory. What, what, what do you think that means? Well, what that means is that, um, equities, especially rather. Reckoning rally rallied. Reckoning rally rallied after, uh, president Trump was elected. Markets sort of saw this as, um, positive for, especially for equity allocations because of some of his policies. And so there was a significant rally, um, sort of for a while. It was short lived because then he kind of started talking about other policies, which were then deemed detrimental. deemed detrimental to equities and growth and the economic outlook. And so it did crash as well. But what they're saying is that Ruffa wasn't invested in a way to benefit from that short increase in equity values. And in fact, you can go further than the commentary there, which is a very small period of time and actually look at the last couple of years. And this is where the concern around Ruffa's ability to perform adequately and play the role within the portfolio, because they've been positioning for quite some time now for a downturn in asset values, especially equity values, which they see as very expensive and quite frankly, overpriced. And so they're kind of betting against equities. And there's been this extraordinary bull run for a couple of years now, which has meant that Ruffa have missed out on all of these gains whilst paying for quite expensive protections and kind of hoping or at least implementing their strategy in such a way that anticipates an equity fall. So it's basically they weren't positioned to benefit from the rise in equities because they weren't sufficiently allocated in their overall assets under management to equities. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to push this point, but my understanding of an asset manager is that they respond to the changing markets. So if, as you said, there was this great surge when President Trump was elected, I thought an astute asset manager would be live to that and take full advantage of it. Yes, you're right. That is the role of an asset manager, especially one that is active, which Ruffa essentially are. An asset manager whose role is to track an index is passive and they are just re-aligning their overall portfolio structure to align to the index. But in this case, you're talking about an active manager, which Ruffa Ruffa, but within Ruffa's mandate, their view is to, their mandate is to maintain a contrarian view and offer an uncorrelated position in your portfolio so that where equities do fall, they're well placed to benefit from that. And so, yes, you know, you'd hope that maybe they were able to react to that to some extent. But it's actually not within their mandate to see a bull run and pile into that bull run when they're doing fundamental analysis and they're valuing these companies at a very different and much lower rate than what the market is. You know, they really believe that the market is really overhyped and really expensive and that a significant correction to equity values will be coming through. And so they're placing themselves to benefit from that situation. Now, after this bull run, Trump announced tariffs, quite aggressive tariffs that really shook the markets and there was a big correction of 20% off of highs. And in that environment, Ruffa will have benefited. And probably if we were looking at March quarter, so 3.9% net of fees over the quarter, and that's where they have reacted to volatility and they have benefited from a momentary, at the very least, downturn in equity valuations. It's a very volatile market at the moment. And so what they're trying to do is not time the market and benefit from the upswing, but position themselves in a way that provides protection and especially protection in a significant downswing. I was going to ask questions about Darwin, but because we're going to have someone at a future meeting, I think it's unnecessary. Can I just ask you one last few questions on the Aberdeen Long Lease Property Fund? Firstly, is it a commercial investment or is it residential? Because according to the commentary, the average terms of the leases are only about 26 years. It seems very low to me for a long, long lease. Yes, I have some updated figures. So at the 31st of March 2025, which will be available from next week, the fund is valued at 52 million, making up 3.7% of the portfolio, and it's had positive returns of 2.57% on since the fund's inception in 2015. Over the year to the 31st of March, it's had a positive rate of return of 4.37%. So this is an increase in performance from what you have in the pack for December. The 26-year lease is still quite appropriate for a long-term strategy because although it's not the longest in the market, it does strike a balance between income, durability, and adapting to the market, and some valuation sensitivities. So given that the commercial tenants are a secure tenant base with the inflation-linked structure, the lease profile is well-suited to meet long-term needs of institutional investors without an excessive duration risk. Because the average lease in a market tends to be 7 to 15 years in these sort of funds. So the fund is continuing to offer high certain cash flows over multiple decades. So we don't believe it's a cause for concern just yet, but it is being monitored by ISEO quite frequently. One of my concerns about Darwin was that we're locked into a 10-year lock-in period, which means there's no exit, likely or not. And we've seen a host of reasons why there's been underperformance. I mean, just to give you an example, COVID-19, higher levels of inflation, cost of living crises, rising interest rates, war in Ukraine, Brexit, fall in interest rates, ongoing economic certainty, change of policy of Labour government. I mean, could you please confirm whether there's a lock-in period for this fund as well? Or is it just a – I mean, property assets are always used – can be very, very tricky because, as you know, they need to be sold to liquidate the asset. Do you know what the position is regarding exit on this one? I'm afraid I don't know what the exit term is for this fund. Do you have – It's not a closed-ended fund in the same way that Darwin is. It's – so you can put in a redemption request and, you know, generally that'll be a six-month period before your redemption request can be actioned. It might be longer, it might be 12 months. But it's not a closed-ended fund like Darwin where we are indeed locked in until the wind-down period. Sorry, one last question. What's the total percentage of monies being held in illiquid funds, in other words, property funds, things like that, of the whole portfolio? In illiquid funds of the whole portfolio? Top of my head, I think it's 36. It is in the annual accounts, which will be shared next week. Let me just – Sorry for the delay. 19% of the net assets of the fund. 19%? 19% cannot be liquidated within a month. Right. But are they all property-based? Because, as we know, Aberdeen is in letting out these holiday lets. Not all property-based, no. Just the eastern funds. Some are infrastructure. Some will be fixed income, I believe. There's fixed income mandates that are closed-ended. Is that right? Not all property. Yeah, so we have the multi-asset credit from Partners Group, which also would be able to. Maybe that is in wind-down, and there is only 2.6 million left in that fund. There's a fair exposure to property in various ways. There's affordable housing, long lease, property funds. Commercial ground rents. Commercial ground rents is a big one. But then also diversified alongside infrastructure, liquid alternatives. You know, different diversification strategies and different strategies across the property spectrum as well. That have different return profiles, different risk levels as well. I'm sorry. One last question on cash flow. Can I take you to that table? I think it's... I think it's three. There's figures there for expenses, net expenses, other transactions. And the figures for each quarter is about £400,000. Except for December 2024, the figure is £1,247,000. Is there any reason? Yes, so we received some redemption monies in that quarter, which we transferred from the bank account to the custodian account, which... This is from the area. So that would be the large outflow of the 12 there. Okay. Are there any other pension? Yeah, right. Can the committee note the report? Perhaps, you know. So we now have the exempt business. As you'll be talking to Darwin next week, I believe there won't be anything that will qualify for exempt session. Yeah. Great. I think that's all there is for this evening. Yeah. Where's the next meeting? I think the next meeting is in... March, 2020... 4th of March, 2026. Thank you all for attending. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.