The Cost Transparency Initiative (CTI) has published new resources, such as mapping guidance for private equity investments, as it looks to drive further adoption of the framework by pension schemes and asset managers following strong take-up so far.
The initiative launched its first major package of templates and guidance a year ago, and today said that feedback from service providers demonstrated strong levels of take-up of the CTI framework from schemes ranging in size and structure.
It said “huge efforts” had been made by asset managers, pension schemes and advisers to ensure the CTI framework became the industry standard.
In the local government pension scheme (LGPS), which incorporates the CTI framework in its transparency code, as at 1 April 2020 all pension funds and asset pools were making use of CTI standard reporting.
The new resources launched today include:
- a new fiduciary management template;
- additional reporting fields in the liability-driven investments (LDI) template;
- real estate investments guidance on completing the templates; and
- mapping guidance for private equity investments
The latter refers to guidance intended to explain how the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) fee reporting template, which is already widely used by private equity firms, can be reconciled with the CTI templates.
The CTI also added FAQs, case studies, and other guidance, including on timeline and expectations. Major public funds such as Royal Mail, RBS, Kingfisher, and National Grid, have publicly stated their commitment to using the CTI framework.
“The expansion of templates to include a focus on fiduciary and LDI will continue to help increase adoption of standardised data collection and reporting”
Patricia Sharman, UK managing director at CACEIS
Mel Duffield, chair of the CTI, said: “With three quarters of pension schemes and consultants reporting a good level of awareness of the Cost Transparency Initiative and wide-spread take up from asset owners large and small, I am really pleased with the progress of this really important initiative to help investment managers and schemes report and understand their costs and deliver better value to savers.
“We are now entering a final push to encourage remaining schemes to adopt the templates and guidance and will continue to promote the benefits both savers and pension fund trustees can gain from their use.”
Patricia Sharman, UK managing director at CACEIS, which took over KAS Bank in 2019, welcomed the new CTI tools.
“We’ve seen a significant increase over recent months in asset managers submitting data via CTI templates and the expansion of templates to include a focus on fiduciary and LDI will continue to help increase adoption of standardised data collection and reporting,” she said.
“The inclusion of a specific LDI template in particular will be welcome for defined benefit schemes.”
The CTI, which is a partnership between the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, the Investment Association, and the LGPS advisory board, has previously said it would review levels of reporting against its published templates after the end of April 2020 reporting period and, if take-up is not up to expectations, discuss with regulators and other market participants how to increase usage.
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