Participants
RB, Watson Wyatt Commodities is interesting, particularly as a diversifying asset class. We’ve been talking to our client base in this area for the last few years. However, the take-up of commodities from the institutional base is still limited. I think when investors are looking at this asset class, it is from a beta, or an asset exposure perspective. But things are moving quickly and I think there are interesting alpha opportunities in this area as well as opportunities for different structures that might be more appealing than some of the benchmark indices. I want to ask Jelle, as a long-standing investor in commodities, to describe PGGM’s experience and how its investments evolved.
JB, PGGM Our basic proposition is that we promise pensions linked to wage inflation. So we need investment returns to meet our liabilities. A lot of investment risk is equity risk – that is what the market offers, there’s a lot of liquidity there, and over the years PGGM’s allocation to equity has increased at the expense of fixed income.
But with a growing allocation to equities the need for diversification grows and so the allocation to alternatives has also grown – initially real estate, private equity.