All eight of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) funds in Wales have called on central government to enable them to pool investments worth a total of £13bn.
According to the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), the Welsh LGPS funds have taken part in the submittal to reduce management costs and create joint-governance to ensure best practice on investments, with the aim of improving returns for the funds.
But the groups also made clear that decisions on where money will be allocated will continue to differ between funds, and remain the responsibility of each LGPS fund.
Additionally, not all of the £13bn worth of assets will be pooled at the start of the process.
The new joint arrangements will provide a range of sub-funds that will be ‘building blocks’ for individual funds to implement their investment strategy.
A formal tender will be issued before the end of 2016 to find an operator to establish and run the range of collective investment vehicles (CIVs) for the new strategy with preferred bidders announced in spring next year.
The aim is for the CIVs to be operation within 2017 – ahead of the government proposals for LGPS investment pools by the end of the financial year in April 2018.
A WLGA spokesperson said: 'The primary objectives behind this initiative are to achieve savings on investment management costs through economies of scale and also to provide access for funds to a wider range of potential investment opportunities.'
