PreviAmbiente, Italy’s defined contribution (DC) pension fund for workers in the environmental and hygiene sectors, has swapped asset manager Credit Suisse for UnipolSai to run its ‘Garantito’ sub-fund, which invests mostly in fixed income, in a bid to cut asset management costs.
Switching asset managers means the scheme will incur “lower management costs” while expanding guarantees offered to members, the scheme said in a note.
The ‘Garantito’ sub-fund has around €350m in assets, as of 2023, according to the latest figures available. It invests 96% of its assets in bonds and 4% in equities.
The severance payment (Trattamento di Fine Rapporto, TFR) is channelled towards the sub-fund if members don’t explicitly pick one of the other two sub-funds of the scheme, the ‘Bilanciato’ and the ‘Azionario’ options.
With UnipolSai, PreviAmbiente continues to pursue its main goal to provide members with supplementary pensions that are as high as the amount received by contributing to the pay-as-you-go system, investing the contributions in line with the investment policy guidelines, it added.
PreviAmbiente noted that the switch to UnipolSai “fits perfectly” into its investment strategy whose main features are a high degree of diversification, investing in bonds, equities, mutual funds and other financial instruments, with a different range of “categories of issuers” and geographical areas.
Moreover, UnipolSai will help the pension fund stick to its responsible investing commitments, it added.
UnipolSai manages mostly ‘Garantito’ assets.
The firm has also recently won a mandate by Fonchim, the pension fund for the chemical sector in Italy, to manage its own ‘Garantito’ sub-fund, changing its asset allocation by adding Italian government bonds and US equities to the mix.
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