Cardano Challenges Outsourcing Competitors with Five-Year Results

(November 15, 2013) — Fiduciary manager Cardano has published its first five-year fiduciary management results, showing its clients outperformed their peers on a liability base by 30 percentage points, and thrown down the gauntlet to competitors to reveal their figures.

The Anglo-Dutch firm, the clients of which include tyre-maker Pirelli, said this result had been achieved with just a third of the risk of other pensions that had not followed their system. Cardano highlighted the difficult investment conditions its clients and the wider market had experienced over the past five years.

“Over the period, levels of risk have been about a third of the industry average and broadly equivalent to portfolio with a mix of 90% bonds and 10% equities,” said Richard Dowell, head of clients at Cardano UK.

Cardano clients had steady outperformance of the liability benchmark at 2.3% per annum (net of fees). This compares to the average pension fund, Cardano said, which showed an estimated 2.1% per annum decline over the same period. The compound result is a 17% improvement for its clients compared to a 14% decline across the wider industry, representing more than a 30 percentage point difference.

“We publish our track-record each year and encourage others to join us to create transparency within the fiduciary management industry,” Dowell said.

There is scant data on the performance of fiduciary managers and other outsourced providers. Pick up the December European edition of aiCIO for a full investigation into inadequacies of the market.

Cardano, which collected the prize for innovation in fiduciary management at the inaugural aiCIO Innovation Awards, works with more than 40 major European pension funds and insurance companies. In the UK, Cardano works with pension funds with assets totalling £50 billion, of which £10 billion is managed on a fiduciary basis.

For more information on the aiCIO European Innovation Awards, taking place on May 15, 2014, email epfeuti@assetinternational.com . For European readers, to subscribe to receive the European edition, click here.