San Francisco City & County Employees' Retirement System hired Voya Financial as third-party administrator for its $3.5 billion 457 plan, Darlene Armanino, executive assistant, said in an email.
SFERS issued an RFP in April 2018 for due diligence purposes, because current administrator Prudential Financial's contract was set to expire on Jan. 31, 2019. The board approved the hiring at its board meeting Wednesday. Prudential was a finalist along with Empower Retirement.
The recommendation by SFERS' deferred compensation committee to hire Voya to the board was originally approved at the committee's Oct. 24 meeting, according to Jan. 9 board meeting materials. Public comments by Gary Delganes, consultant for the San Francisco Police Officers Association, at that meeting, charged potential bias by deferred compensation staff against Prudential. Staff could find no evidence of bias, and hired Meketa Investment Group to conduct an additional level of due diligence on the proposals received. Meketa, following the original recommendation of staff and deferred compensation consultant Callan, which originally assisted with the search, confirmed the recommendation of Voya at the committee's Dec. 27 meeting.
Separately, SFERS' board Wednesday approved the termination of Fidelity Institutional Asset Management, which ran $188 million active international small-cap equity portfolio for the $24.1 billion defined benefit plan, due to underperformance. How the assets will be reallocated was not provided.
Fidelity spokesman Charlie Kelly declined to comment.
The pension fund's actual allocation to public equities as of Dec. 31 was 33.5%.
