UK- GE Life, part of the US insurance and investment group GE Financial, has appointed State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment arm of to run the £850m (e1,345m) equity element of its GE ‘Pensions With Profits’ fund.

SSgA, which won the mandate after a review, will manage 90% of the global equity portfolio actively while the rest will be on a passive basis. SSgA will take responsibility for the management with immediate effect.

Previous equity managers for the fund were JP Morgan Fleming for the UK and US, Goldman Sachs AM, who covered Europe and the Far East and Schroders who ran the Japanese component. State Street was already employed by GE to run the passive equity component.

All other assets in the £2bn closed fund are managed by GE Insurance Holdings, which is responsible for the management of all GE Pensions non-equity portfolios. Asset allocation decisions will remain with the GE Group.

Gavin Hill, chief investment officer at GE Insurance Holdings, said: “SSgA has impressed us with its grasp of process, performance attribution and its overall management controls, which we believe will benefit policyholders.”

He continued: “the portfolio benchmarks are unchanged as are the overall performance and risk targets. Formal reviews will be carried out each quarter with monitoring of the performance of the portfolios taking place on a monthly basis.”

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