One in five pensions adopt fresh mandates

sharp increase in pension funds changing mandates as schemes move towards specific benchmarks rather than peer group comparisons

Pension funds have been increasingly adopting fresh portfolio mandates as they seek to meet scheme-specific benchmarks, according to research by analyst Russell/Mellon. At the end of 1989, slightly less than one in 10 mandates had been newly set up during the year. By 2004, this had risen to around one in five. Russell/Mellon measured the performance of 672 UK pension funds, representative of 1,885 separate manager portfolios at the end of 2004. The group believes this increase in changing mandates has been influenced by a number of factors. Daniel Hall, Russell/Mellon's publication...