Aon has taken on an additional £3.5 billion ($4.5 billion) in assets under management with three new clients for its outsourced chief investment officer service in the U.K.
As a result, the firm’s global AUM has increased to £144 billion, said a Nov. 5 news release.
The new clients include a £1.25 billion pension plan, which was investing across a range of asset classes and looking to simplify its investment strategy, and a £1 billion charitable foundation with a widely diversified asset pool. Aon did not disclose the name of either of the pension plan or the charity.
The other client is the Aon Retirement Plan, Aon’s £1.25 billion legacy defined benefit scheme which has around 13,000 members. The trustees of the plan decided to appoint an outsourced chief investment officer to “free up trustee time for wider strategic decisions and projects,” the release noted.
A spokesperson for Aon explained that as is common in the U.K., the ARP is a defined benefit scheme run by a separate trustee board rather than by the company itself. In this case, the trustees of the ARP have chosen to outsource the investment decision-making for the scheme to the OCIO team at Aon, the spokesperson added.
“More and more pension schemes and asset owners are seeing OCIO services as the most efficient way to run the investment of their assets, allowing them a clear focus on strategy while retaining agility in the way the assets are invested,” said William Parry, partner and head of delegated clients at Aon in the U.K., in the release.
“We are particularly pleased to extend the application of Aon’s investment expertise beyond the pensions sector by working with a blue-chip charitable foundation whose activities are enabling positive change for people.”
