Specialist insurer Pension Insurance Corp. hired Macquarie Asset Management to run a new allocation to the U.S. private placement market.
PIC, an insurer of defined benefit pension fund liabilities, invests £9.4 billion ($13 billion) in 150 privately sourced debt investments in the U.K. and Europe, covering renewable energy, social housing, education and other sectors.
The appointment marks PIC's expansion into the $60 billion U.S. private placement market, a news release on PIC's website said. Privately sourced debt investments help the insurer with pricing for new business deals and can be customized to match PIC's liabilities when publicly available data are scarce.
"The U.S. private debt market offers a strong supply of high-quality investment grade credits," Rob Groves, CIO at PIC, said in the release. "We already have a large allocation in our portfolio to U.S.-listed debt and we have recently appointed Wellington Management to oversee our growing U.S. municipal bond portfolio, so this appointment is a natural complement to that strategy." Wellington was hired to run a £700 million allocation.
Macquarie, which has £303.6 billion in assets under management, of which about £112.4 billion is fixed-income business, joins PIC's panel of fixed-income managers alongside Janus Henderson Investors, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Schroders, Wellington and TwentyFour Asset Management.
A spokesman said Macquarie will be tasked with building the insurer's allocation in U.S. private placements, so an allocation figure was not available.
