Ian Mills: While individual savers have benefited from real-time online tools for years, institutional investors, including pension schemes, have often lagged behind.
Barnett Waddingham has launched ‘Lighthouse’ to enhance investment monitoring for pension schemes.
The firm has launched the monitoring service in a bid to enhance how pension scheme trustees and sponsors track and manage their investment strategy.
The consultancy's service – Lighthouse – aims to go beyond static reporting cycles, focussing on continuous oversight of key investment metrics in a bid to enable faster decision making.
Lighthouse is built around regular manager data feeds and Barnett Waddingham's proprietary Illuminate funding tracker platform.
It replaces the traditional quarterly reporting cycle with an interactive online dashboard – alerting Barnett Waddingham consultants when elements of a scheme's strategy and implementation move outside pre-set tolerances.
Barnett Waddingham said this coverage is "extensive" – including factors such as manager performance, asset allocation, hedging, collateral, funding, liquidity and manager ratings.
But the consultancy said Lighthouse was not a substitute for advice – noting that its consultants remain fully responsible for analysing data, interpreting alerts, and advising clients on the appropriate course of action.
Barnett Waddingham partner and head of defined benefit endgame strategy Ian Mills said: "For too long, trustees have had to rely on backward-looking reports to make forward-looking decisions.
"Lighthouse brings investment monitoring into the present, delivering timely insights that are genuinely useful for decision-making. While individual savers have benefited from real-time online tools for years, institutional investors, including pension schemes, have often lagged behind."
Mills added: "Lighthouse helps close that gap and allows our clients to be more proactive, informed and in control."
