NETHERLANDS - The €315m pension fund for workers in the arts and culture sector has appointed pensions provider PGGM as its fiduciary manager.

"We have been looking for an asset manager that could offer us extensive advisory services as well as an increased focus on our liabilities structure," said Barbara Leach, chair of the Stichting Pensioenfonds Cultuur.

"PGGM could offer us an integrated package, including risk control, research, reporting and monitoring. The choice of PGGM, which we consider to be a stable fiduciary manager, follows a very thorough selection process with our adviser, Anton van Nunen of Van Nunen & Partners," she added.

Else Bos, PGGM's chief of institutional Business, claimed the culture scheme fits well with PGGM, and said the deal "reinforces [PGGM] as a platform".

PGGM manages almost €85bn in assets on behalf of the healthcare scheme PFZW, as well as almost €2bn in assets for Aena, the pension fund for self-employed artists, as well as for the scheme for private security companies and a pension plan for architects' firms.

The Stichting Pensioenfonds Cultuur was created through the merger on 1 January 2008 of pension funds for dancers, Dutch theatre, arts and culture as well as the pre-pension scheme for arts and culture.

Until the change, the new scheme's assets were managed by Aberdeen Asset Management and Schroders Investment Management but will now be looked after by PGGM, said Leach.

The administration of the Pensioenfonds Cultuur will remain with Kunst en Cultuur Pensioen- en Levensverzekeringmaatschappij.

The Stichting Pensioenfonds Cultuur has approximately 400 affiliated employers, and over 20,000 participants in total.

At the end of last 2009, the new scheme's cover ratio was 97%.

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