Brunel pool names State Street as custodian and appoints 15 staff
The Brunel Pension Partnership (BPP) has appointed State Street as its third-party administrator and custodian, while making 15 further hires.
The bank has been awarded a £28.4m mandate by the south-western local government pension scheme (LGPS) pool, starting in November.
The mandate will have a particular focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, and will see State Street provide direct custody and administration services to BPP's LGPS clients.
State Street will also provide the pool with fund accounting, performance measurement, foreign exchange, data, and risk analytics.
The BPP, which was set up in July, will coordinate investments for the local government pension funds for Avon, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, the Environment Agency, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire.
BPP chief executive Dawn Turner said the mandate will provide an exciting opportunity for developing ESG reporting.
"We are delighted after a highly competitive and robust procurement to appoint State Street, and we have already established areas where we can work strategically together to increase our valued added to our clients, including client reporting, risk management and transparency," she said. "The partnership we will have on integrating ESG reporting into State Street systems is very exciting."
State Street head of UK pensions and banks, asset owner solutions, Andy Todd said the firm looked forward to working with the BPP.
"We are delighted to be partnering with Brunel and their LGPS clients to assist with the consolidation of their assets, as well as the design, build, testing and implementation of the asset servicing infrastructure required to meet their investment requirements," he said. "In particular, we look forward to combining Brunel's market-leading ESG expertise with our own suite of data innovation technologies to embed ESG in the investment decision-making process."
The pool has also hired a further 15 people, with nine coming from the local funds entering the pool and the other six hired from external organisations.
These include Cornwall Pension Fund investment manager Matthew Trebilcock who will join the BPP as client relationship director in October. Also, Environment Agency Pension Fund (EAPF) chief responsible investment and risk officer Faith Ward, and Wiltshire Pension Fund head of pensions David Anthony will join as chief responsible investment officer and head of finance & corporate services respectively in December.
The BPP said the 15 hires meant its compliance and risk directorate is now complete, and it will now focus on nine other roles, but primarily on hiring a head of private markets.
It is also looking for another investment principal for private markets, a senior investment officer, and three investment officers for its investment directorate; and a client relationship officer, investment operations officer and a business planner for its client relationship and operations team.
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