Lloyds Bank Pension Hires Strategy Chief | Chief Investment Officer

Lloyds Banking Group has hired The Pensions Trust’s CIO David Adkins as head of investment strategy for its internal team.

Adkins will join the UK-based team—which runs roughly £32 billion ($41.4 billion) across a number of funds—at the start of next month, the pension confirmed to CIO. He spent six years at the helm of The Pensions Trust, a multi-employer fund catering chiefly for the charity sector, responsible for its £7 billion investment portfolio.

At Lloyds, Adkins will report to CIO Ian McKinlay, who is building a new investment team after joining a year ago from insurance company Aviva. The team is responsible for Lloyds Bank’s two defined benefit funds and another linked to its 2009 purchase of Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS).

Adkins replaces Steve McMillan, who left in March for hedge fund BlueMountain Capital Management.

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Before joining The Pensions Trust in 2010, Adkins was an investment consultant at what is now Willis Towers Watson for 12 years. He previously spent 10 years at Buck Consultants.

Larissa Benbow, who led HBOS’ pension investments, and Simon Lee, who held a similar role for the Lloyds funds, both left the group in the first half of last year amid a raft of changes. Benbow has since joined AustralianSuper, while Lee is now CIO at high street chain Marks & Spencer’s pension fund.

Earlier this year, Lloyds overhauled its governance structure, replacing three trustee boards for its three main pensions with one single board. Among its nine members are Sally Bridgeland, former CIO of the BP Pension Scheme, and independent trustees Jocelyn Blackwell and Mark Ashworth.

The Pensions Trust is yet to announce a replacement for Adkins. Last month it hired Emmanuel Bocquet and John Steel from Aerion Fund Management, the in-house asset manager for National Grid which was sold to Legal & General earlier this year. Bocquet is portfolio strategist, while Steel is investment operations manager.

Canada’s largest pension fund (CPPIB) can expect surging inflows, and its newest has officially launched, following two major policymaker decisions.

The Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO) Act passed July 1—Canada Day—creating a new member of the Toronto mega-investors club.

“The larger fund is expected to lower administrative costs, which will help improve return on investments.”The fledgling operation has a board of finance professionals, $50 billion in committed capital, and roughly nine months to staff up and start investing, according to the Ontario government.

IMCO “will enable public-sector organizations to pool assets and create economies of scale,” the province’s Minister of Finance Charles Sousa said in a statement Thursday. “This will increase efficiency.”

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Whether bigger is indeed better for investing pension assets has been under hot debate in Canada for months.

“The answer is unequivocally no,” Philip Cross—co-author of a CD Howe Institute study on the issue—told CIO in April. “There’s no evidence there are economies of scale.” The CD Howe Institute is one of two influential right-leaning think tanks waging vocal opposition to expanding Canada’s defined-benefit systems.

Canada’s leading investment consultant, Keith Ambachtsheer, entered an ongoing public back-and-forth with the other think tank (Fraser Institute) in defense of the Canadian model.

“Our friends at the Fraser Institute have launched another Canada Pension Plan-bashing barrage,” Ambachtsheer wrote Tuesday, in a “reader’s guide” to a critical Vancouver Sun op-ed by the institute. He suggested the think tank’s attempts to discredit CPPIB stemmed from its opposition to “wealth transfers,” not the investment organization itself.

The CD Howe and Fraser institutes officially lost the policy debate in recent weeks. On June 20, federal and provincial leaders agreed to expand Canada Pension Plan benefits, which will further swell its C$265 billion (US$204 billion) investment fund.

IMCO’s launch marked the second triumph for Canadian-model advocates and the Ontario government, which led efforts to enlarge the national plan as well. It hailed both achievements in announcing IMCO’s creation.

“The larger fund is expected to lower administrative costs, which will help improve return on investments,” the provincial finance ministry said. “The new board’s main priority will be to prepare the corporation to manage members’ funds in the spring of 2017.”

The CD Howe and Fraser institutes have yet to issue responses.