Illinois State Universities Retirement System, Champaign, Ill., approved a search for the $17.8 billion defined benefit plan's first private credit consultant during a June 5 conference call board meeting, spokeswoman Beth A. Spencer confirmed in an email.
SURS' investment staff intends to add a new private credit allocation within the plan's stabilized growth portfolio, which has a target allocation of 25% of total plan assets, according to the RFP on the system's website.
The target allocation to the new private credit portfolio will be 5% to 7% of total plan assets with funding coming from roughly halving the current 14% allocation to the credit fixed-income sub-asset class in the stabilized growth portfolio, the RFP showed.
RFP responses are due by 4:30 p.m. on July 10 and consultant selection will take place on Sept. 10.
In other news from SURS' board meeting, trustees approved a commitment of up to $50 million to value-oriented Longpoint Realty Fund II, managed by Longpoint Realty Partners, a new manager for the fund, a SURS' news release said.
In January, SURS issued an RFI for real assets managers as part of its $475 million pacing plan to the asset class in 2020.
The defined benefit plan's real assets portfolio totaled about $1.5 billion or 8.2% of total assets as of March 31, an investment report showed.
New managers for the fund — Ariel Investments and GQG Partners — were hired to manage global equity mandates. The strategies were not provided in the news release and the mandate sizes will be determined later.
Trustees approved the recommendation of SURS' staff to transfer the $179 million EARNEST Partners currently manages in U.S. equities for the system to a global equity strategy, the release said.
SURS awarded existing equity manager Strategic Global Advisors a new global equity mandate, the size of which will be determined later, the release said.
SGA currently manages $301 million for SURS.
SURS' global equity portfolio totaled $1.6 billion as of March 31 or about 9% of plan assets.
