Lambeth pension fund facts & figures

I’m a Lambeth resident so I keep an eye on what my local pension fund is up to. Like many local authority funds, Lambeth is far more open to scrutiny about what it does than a typical private sector fund and there is a dedicated section on the council website here. Below are just a few excerpts from the agenda report for the latest meeting of the pensions panel.

The scheme has the following managers –

• Aberdeen Asset Management (multi-asset mandate and a bond mandate)
• Alliance Bernstein Asset Management (balanced mandate)
• UBS Global Asset Management (global equity mandate)
• Majedie Asset Management (UK equity mandate)
• RREFF (property)
• Adam Street Partners (private equity)

Aberdeen, Alliance Bernstein and Majedie outperformed. RREFF hit their benchmark. UBS underperformed.

The private equity investment is, at £6.5m, actually pretty small in the context of a fund with over £750m in assets. That doesn’t mean, by the way, that I’m going to be lobbying the fund to increase its allocation. The internal rate of return on the investment to date is 22.05%.

The report has this to say about fees –

Fees for quarter to June 2007 were: - Aberdeen Asset Management, £82,334.69, UBS £114,088.09, Alliance Bernstein £240,026.40, Adam Street Partners £127,007.66 and Majedie Asset Management £105,651.56. The total fees paid for the quarter was £669,108.40.

Which means the fund management fees for a year will be around the £2.5m mark. It would be interesting to see what this represents as a cost per scheme member. According to the DCLG’s most recent SF3 data the average across all local authority funds is £58.17, but for inner London funds it is a hefty £123.75.

I have one moan - there isn’t any voting or engagement information available (not even copies of fund manager reports) which is a shame.