Interview | Anthony Parnell
“Without putting us on a pedestal, over the past 18 months we have done a lot of work and we are
keeping the momentum going.” Anthony Parnell, treasury and pension investments manager at
Carmarthenshire County Council discusses the pooling process for Wales Pension Partnership, picking managers, being ahead of the government when it comes to pooling and the importance of being responsible.
What stage is Wales Pension Partnership (WPP) at in its pooling process? We have pooled our global equity invest- ments into two sub-funds. They are valued at approximately £3.5bn. We have sub-funds set up for UK and Euro- pean equities and we are currently working through the process of setting up fixed income sub-funds. We had a joint collaboration and procure- ment on passive investments a few years ago. We did that prior to the government prescribing us to pool our assets.
Why were you ahead of the government on this?
We were just looking for the opportunity. We knew that the shires had done some- thing on passive.
There were various reports produced a few years ago and we decided to bite the bullet and collaborate on passive investments to get cheaper fees, which we managed to get. So, there was a positive outcome.
One of the reasons for the creation of pool- ing was to cut fees, so how much do you expect your member funds to save? It is difficult to say as it is early days. There are major savings to be made across the WPP and once our investments in global equities gather pace there will be substan-
18 | portfolio institutional | May–June 2019 | issue 84
tial savings to be made there as well.
We are talking millions of pounds though, aren’t we? We are talking millions of pounds of sav- ings from investment manager fees over the long term. That is what we are looking at. It is not short termism.
What percentage of the £16bn of assets owned by your partner funds do you intend to have pooled by the end of 2019? In this calendar year, it would potentially be more than 60%. At the moment, global equities and the pas- sive funds together come to at least £5.5bn.
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