Alifond, the second pillar pension scheme for employees of the Italian food industry, has awarded six traditional mandates and one private assets mandate for its ’bilanciato’ sub-fund.

Alifond tendered the mandates last October which included two global active balanced mandates worth a combined €200m, two specialist global active bond briefs for a total of €150m, and two specialist global active equity mandates worth €110m in total.

It has now appointed several assset managers. Eurizon and Anima will run the global active balanced mandates, while AXA and PIMCO will manage the global active bond briefs. Schroders and Candriam will handle the global active equity portfolios.

The fund approved a new the strategic asset allocation in 2020 that also included investments in private assets only for its bilanciato (or balanced) sub-fund.

Alifond assigned a private assets mandate to Schroder Investment Management (Europe) in February, it added.

Last year, the scheme also renewed two mandates with Amundi and Groupama for its bilanciato portfolio and one mandate for its dinamico sub-fund with Generali, according to a financial statement for 2020.

The bilanciato sub-fund allocates primarily to debt securities, 35% government and 30% corporate, with an equity component of approximately 30% that cannot exceed 50%. It conducts investments over a period of 5-10 years.

Asset under management for the bilanciato sub-fund amount to €1.4bn out of €1.7bn of the fund’s total assets.

The average annual return of the bilanciato portfolio is 3.64%, higher than the severance pay Trattamento di Fine Rapporto (TFR) at 2.14%, the statement added.

Priamo, the second pillar pension fund for the Italian public transport industry, has awarded a financial adviser mandate to Link Institutional Advisory, according to a 2020 financial statement.

The notice was tendered back in February and the contract, which will last for a period of three years starting July 2021, included:

  • assisting the fund with its investment policy, assessing objectives pursued and evaluating results achieved;
  • updating the fund’s strategic asset allocation in terms of the structure of mandates, reviewing reference indices and the limits envisaged for each mandate;
  • assisting with the manager selection;
  • periodic monitoring of existing mandates and overall assessment of financial management;
  • assisting with identification, analysis, assessment and control of the risks associated with asset management, at macroeconomic level as well as for individual mandates.

Asset under management at the fund stood at €1.8bn in 2020, split between €426.4m in a ‘garantito’ sub-fund, €104.8m in a ‘bilanciato prudenza’ sub-fund and €1.3bn in a ‘bilanciato svilupo’ sub-fund.

The garantito portfolio –  which recorded a net return of 0.10% in 2020 – invests in debt securities with a 1-5 year maturity. It could invest in equities up to a limit of 8% of total assets under management and in non-investment grade bonds up to a maximum of 10% of total assets.

The bilanciato prudenza sub fund – which returned 1.50% last year – invests mainly in bonds with short to medium-term maturity while the equity share is approximately equal to the maximum limit of 17.50%.

The bilanciato sviluppo sub-fund – which  returned 4.64% in 202 – balances allocations between debt securities and an equity component up to a maximum of 35% of the assets in the portfolio.

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