Many of our team have asset management, investment banking or asset-owner backgrounds, so they have hands-on experience of investment and its associated risks and complexities, particularly in private markets.
This gives the team a competitive edge when providing rigour and informed challenge to our asset class and manager-research process.
Our team of over 30 investment-research professionals is headed by Claire Cairney, who has over 25 years' industry experience.
100
+
years' experience
30
+
Investment research team
90
+
partners
How we help
Our research is structured by the advice we offer across growth, income and protection. Asset-class coverage ranges from listed equities, multi-asset, core fixed income, multi-asset credit and liability driven investing to private markets. We cover over 20 private markets including, private equity, debt, property, infrastructure, renewables and natural capital, as well as more niche strategies such as bank capital release and asset-backed lending.
We work closely with our client consultants to understand our customers’ needs and focus our research. The research oversight group, chaired by CIO, David Walker, provides oversight, challenge and sign-off for investment opportunities before they’re taken to our clients.
Our approach means we can get new research opportunities into our clients’ portfolios quickly. We were one of the first UK consultants to have our clients invest in direct lending after the global financial crisis, allowing them to benefit from the illiquidity premium on offer.
We provide asset class and manager research to a diversified client base across defined benefit, defined contribution, Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), charities, insurance and retail. We also work with external parties, which can involve assessing in-house asset management capabilities or providing independent manager-selection advice. As the largest adviser to the LGPS, we have a breadth and depth of experience working with pools.
Our process involves screening managers based on our 5-factor assessment:
firm
people
philosophy and process
performance and risk
suitability and costs
Responsible investment (RI) is embedded into our research, with asset-class researchers working alongside our RI professionals.
An example of our output is the development of a sustainable framework. This can be applied across asset classes to test the sustainability of a fund, allowing us to see past manager labelling and greenwashing. We’ve also developed an RI ratings framework to assess managers at overall firm level, which includes factors like diversity, equity and inclusion.
As advisers and founding members of the Net Zero Investment Consultants Initiative, we’re transparent in reporting our research on climate reporting in private markets. In our second annual survey, we issued a detailed survey for 157 funds across 57 asset managers, covering private equity, private debt, property and infrastructure.
Our manager research process encourages debate and challenge from our manager ratings committee, which agrees and signs-off all ratings.
Our process identifies and rates preferred and positive ‘best in class’ managers, in whom we have high conviction. A preferred rating indicates managers with a competitive edge, which gives a focused recommendation list. We also provide ongoing manager monitoring to mitigate risk.
Our red flag system means we can put a manager ‘on watch’ if we believe there’s been a significant event. Our researchers then carry out detailed analysis to see if the event will affect the rating.
We regularly review our manager ratings for each asset class to ensure our ratings remain relevant and capture any new fund launches.
We carry out in-depth research of the full range of asset classes, taking a one-to-three year view on those we believe are attractive or unattractive.
We’re supported by Hymans Robertson’s in-house economic scenario service (ESS). This runs a proprietary stochastic model for projecting long-term return and risk metrics. These asset-class views are then scrutinised by our capital markets oversight committee.
