Pension Poaches from Fund Manager for Internal Team

(March 11, 2013) — The in-house team managing some of the largest pension assets in the United Kingdom has scooped a fund management veteran to join its ranks.

Jonathan Abrahams has joined Coal Pension Trustees Investment, which oversees £20 billion in assets on behalf of two funds run for the coal mining industry, as head of portfolio construction.

Abrahams joined the pension manager this month after leaving Aviva Investors after over ten years of service in December. Most recently he was head of multi-asset fund implementation at the European investment manager and insurer.

Coal Pension Trustees Investment confirmed the move to aiCIO‘s sister title PlanSponsorEurope.

Abrahams’ arrival follows the appointment of Bill Dinning by the pension manager as head of investment strategy. Dinning had held the same position at Kames Capital – formerly Aegon – and left the firm in November after nine years of service.

The Coal Pension team is registered by the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) as investment advisers to the fund’s trustees. The firm has been authorised since June 2011 and has been steadily building up its in-house resources.

The trend to appoint fund management professionals to in-house pension funds has been accelerating in the UK over the past couple of years. Last month aiCIO revealed that grocery giant Tesco had beefed up its internal pension investment team a year after appointing a selection from European asset managers to launch it defined benefit investment line-up.

The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) also became FSA-registered last year and has been appointing new members to its alternative investment capability.

For an interview with members of the Coal Pension and USS investment teams, pick up next month’s edition of aiCIO.

Related content: We Don’t Use Asset Managers – We Are One.