The London Pensions Fund Authority (LPFA) has named Susan Martin as its new chief executive. Martin joined LPFA in April 2007 as director of organisational development and was promoted to deputy chief executive in 2011 before becoming interim chief executive after Mike Taylor retired in August 2013.
What are your priorities for the role?
In the short term I will focus on delivering a good pension administration and payroll service to the LPFA and agency partners as well as delivering excellent returns from the fund. We will also continue to work on building the best asset and liability management techniques for the good of the LPFA and all our partners as well as implementing LGPS 2014. Once the Minister announces his plans for the future structure of the LGPS my role will be to ensure the skills and expertise of the LPFA are utilised to deliver sustainable public sector pensions for generations to come.
What do you hope to see come out of discussions over a potential pooling of London’s pension funds by the end of the year?
When the Minister announced the Call for Evidence, he quite rightly extended the scope of the review to cover the 89 schemes in England and Wales. All LGPS schemes face similar issues and it is only by collaborating that we will see real improvements in the historic deficits that many of these schemes currently have. The LPFA is committed to supporting the government in addressing these public sector pension issues. The Minister is expected to shortly announce his findings and what his proposals for the future structure of the LGPS. I hope the Minister will take this once-in-a-generation opportunity to implement radical change that would allow us to start to build world class public sector pensions in the UK that we can all be proud of. I do not expect these changes to be implemented overnight, we have to implement LGPS 2014 and other public sector schemes, such as police and fire services, in 2015, but what we need at this stage is the legislative change and a road map that all current 89 funds of the LGPS can work towards.
What are the main issues facing institutional investors?
Currently I believe the main issues are: historic funding deficits; finding quality returns in a low return, low rates environment; diversifying in a world where assets tend to be correlated; finding high quality opportunities in illiquid asset classes and being nimble to respond to them in a timely fashion; and understanding one’s liabilities and hedging unrewarded risk.
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