GERMANY/US- The pensions advisory team from Siemens Financial Services and its US partner Lattice Financial have been appointed by Canada’s Ontario public service employees pension fund for advice on its investment structure.

SFS’s pensions advisory team was launched three years ago as an in-house advisor but last year began to offer third party services. Ontario will use Lattice and SFS to determine its optimal strategic asset allocation. As part of this they have been asked to reduce the scheme’s risk of being unable to meet current and future funding objectives.

Ontario is Canada’s twelfth largest fund, manages C$9.4bn and represents 48,000 public sector employees.

The pensions team has already advised European companies E.ON, Robert Bosch and SFK, the Swedish industrials company, as well as the European Patent Office.

Siemens Financial Services offers some consulting services in North America but, says a Spokeswoman: “North America is not primarily a target market for us, rather our markets are predominantly Germany and Europe.”

The specialist pensions consulting team provides a range of services including pensions governance and investment policy, the selection and monitoring of external service providers and pensions reporting systems.