Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System, Des Moines, will search next month for a pool of passive managers, said Karl Koch, chief investment officer, in an e-mail.
The $27.7 billion pension fund plans to issue an RFP because it “seeks to have a passive option in all of our public market asset classes if/where possible to have a source of liquidity for rebalancing and/or maintaining asset allocation target weights,” said Mr. Koch.
The pension fund decided to issue a single RFP rather than issue one every time the pension fund needs a passive manager in the future. “Then if/when IPERS decides we want a passive strategy in a particular asset class or market, we can ask each provider to submit an index fund product for our review,” Mr. Koch said.
The pension fund probably will only look at commingled funds, he added, and the pension fund does not plan on consolidating any existing index fund portfolios, nor does it plan on replacing any active managers with passive managers.
The RFP will be posted on the pension fund's website.
Separately, pension fund officials approved allocating $700 million to private equity funds in 2015.