GLOBAL - The German electronics giant Siemens is working towards organising a single platform from its base in Munich for the asset manager selection of its various pension funds globally.

Dutch Siemens fund manager Maarten Jansen told IPE the €550m Dutch pension funds of Siemens have recently concluded a change to its mandate structure with its asset managers, going from balanced mandates to more specialised mandates.

The changes follow collaboration with Siemens Financial Services in Munich: "For a year, we have been working more closely together within SFS to get to a joint selection of asset managers," said Jansen.

The group will select managers, and the pension funds in the various countries can use the expertise of the centrally-organised group to see which managers could be used for a mandate.

Jansen added: "We concluded that while with balanced mandates there are good asset managers, not every manager can excel in everything. We think that we will profit more from good managers in specific segments."

The group believes streamlining manager selection via one central platform will reduce the fees that pension funds have to pay, while making evaluation of the various managers easier.

That said, there are no plans for multi-asset pooling yet, according to Jansen.

Moreover, the Dutch fund has diversified its forward swaps strategies, from a single swap last year to the current range of five over various durations.

According to the fund, this change will mean a change in the value of liabilities which more closely follows changes in the value of the fixed income portfolio.

If you have any comments you would like to add to this or any other story, contact Carolyn Bandel on +44 (0)20 7261 4622 or email carolyn.bandel@ipe.com
 

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