Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) was the largest single beneficiary of a 25% increase in liability-driven investment (LDI) mandates in the UK, a survey by KPMG has found.
The consultancy’s annual assessment of LDI mandates of pension funds found LGIM, one of Europe’s largest institutional managers, according to 2016’s IPE Top 400 Asset Managers, was in charge of 414 hedging mandates at the end of 2015, an increase of 126 over the course of the year.
Insight Investment, the manager with the second-largest number of mandates, reported 217 at the end of last year, followed by BMO Asset Management with 189 mandates.
When measured in mandates, the three largest managers’ share of the market has remained largely static since 2012, when LGIM claimed 28.5% of mandates, Insight 17.4% and BMO 12%.
Only LGIM’s market share markedly increased by the end of 2015, when it claimed 32% of nearly 1,290 mandates worth £741bn (€1trn), whereas Insight’s market share measured by mandates fell to 16.8% and BMO’s rose to 14.6%.
“Despite the 25% increase in the number of mandates in 2015,” the survey notes, “the number of trigger strategies in place remained the same over the year, which indicates trigger strategies are falling out of favour with pension schemes setting up new LDI mandates or increasing their hedge.”
Barry Jones, head of LDI at KPMG, said the results showed a shift away from trigger strategies.
“The big change in LDI strategy over 2015 has been the move away from yield triggers as a mechanism for extending hedging programme,” he said.
“It appears investors have given up waiting for interest rates to rise and have decided to just get on and do it.”
Of the surveyed investment managers, only 12% said they expected rates to rise by more than 0.5% over the coming three years – less than half of the 26% of managers who expected such a rate rise at the end of 2014.
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