The Roadstone Group have been long-time advocates of the superiority of in-house management over out-sourcing, and as winners in the Fund Structure and Administration award for Ireland it would certainly appear to work for them.
Brendan Hackett is a director and secretary of the trustee company which overseas the fund. It was established in 1967 and now boasts 1,000 active members and a similar number of pensioners.
It may surprise many to learn that Hackett runs a department comprising two people – including him – to carry out all these management tasks.
The company became involved in the IPE awards after Hackett had given a presentation to the Irish Association of Pension Funds extolling the advantages of in-house management, which was to become the basis of the fund’s submission. “Given how we came to enter the competition, I think you can say it was a very pleasant surprise to win,” he says.
He explained how the system works at Roadstone: “We obviously have to engage the services of a number of experts in different fields, but what we describe as in-house management means that effectively we manage the managers and experts. The bottom line is that this system is more efficient for us in a number of ways. I have no ideological opposition to the idea of outsourcing if it can be done efficiently, which is not the case with us.”
Despite being a very small team, he is happy that the trustee company has proved more than competent in looking after all constituent elements of fund management at Roadstone.
“It is not only my opinion,” he adds. “We recently invited a consultancy group in and even they had to admit that they could not compete with the costs which we incur. More significantly they also admitted that we were providing an excellent service.”
He accepts that the set-up may not be the norm, since the company carries out a wide-ranging number of tasks. The 10-member board, four of whose constituency are elected by fund members of the trustee company meets quarterly.
Since July of this year an investment sub-committee has been meeting regularly to assess strategy.
“The IPE awards are rewarding improving standards, and anything which aids that improvement is to be applauded.
“I recall at the inaugural awards for Irish Pension Fund Annual Reports we were overall winners, so I guess this prize suggests we are still carrying out the right working practises,” Hackett concludes.

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