Aon plc has announced that it has taken on an additional GBP3.5 billion in assets under management (AUM) with three new clients for its outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) service in the UK. This takes the AUM of the EMEA delegated consulting business to over GBP29 billion, and globally to GBP144 billion (as of 30 September 2024).
Two of the new clients are a GBP1.25 billion pension scheme, which was investing across a range of asset classes and looking to simplify its investment strategy, and a prestigious GBP1 billion charitable foundation with a widely diversified asset pool.
The other client is the Aon Retirement Plan (ARP). The ARP is Aon’s GBP2.5 billion legacy defined benefit scheme which has around 13,000 members. The trustees of the plan decided to appoint an outsourced chief investment officer to free up trustee time for wider strategic decisions and projects.
William Parry, partner and head of delegated clients at Aon in the UK, says:
“This is an exciting time for our delegated business. We have reinvigorated our OCIO offering as part of our delegated platform, investing heavily in technology and recognising the significant recent increase in the number of schemes looking to outsource. Seeing new clients voting with their feet and coming to us is always a positive sign.
“More and more pension schemes and asset owners are seeing OCIO services as the most efficient way to run the investment of their assets, allowing them a clear focus on strategy while retaining agility in the way the assets are invested.”
William Parry says: “We are particularly pleased to extend the application of Aon’s investment expertise beyond the pensions sector by working with a blue-chip charitable foundation whose activities are enabling positive change for people. The difference in strategic goals and the impact this has on asset allocation is a fantastic test of the robustness of our platform, allowing complete freedom to explore the full opportunity set.
“As with our two new pension scheme clients, we will be bringing both our long-term strategic expertise to bear on the assets as well implementing this strategy via our OCIO function.”
