Cbus has appointed an investment specialist, equities, as part of its strategy to tailor mandates with its fund managers, in contrast to the growing trend amongst other sizeable funds to bring investments in house.
The $31 billion fund has recruited Kiran Singh to the role. He has experience across both Asia and Australia, most recently as a senior portfolio manager at Nomura Asset Management in Singapore. He has also held senior roles at VFMC and INVESCO in Australia.
Brett Chatfield, investment manager of public markets, said: “Cbus is increasingly engaging more directly with corporates and using our size to its maximum value. Singh will drive a range of new initiatives as well as further enhance our manager research and dynamic asset allocation processes.”
Cbus has adopted this strategy of tailored mandates as it believes bringing assets in-house to be too blunt an approach in dealing with the complexities of transitioning from a medium to a large fund.
In an interview with Investment Magazine earlier this year David Atkin, chief executive of Cbus, described the risk of having an in-house team as creating inflexibility which would limit the fund from maximising returns in certain investment cycles.
Building up its investment team with people able to collaborate with fund managers to create more tailored mandates will improve the level of strategic thinking in the team, ensuring optimal performance from the back and middle office, Atkin said.
Kristian Fok, chief investment officer, added it was managing the portfolio in a smarter way, identifying where the biggest risk exposures and opportunities are and generally thinking about the portfolio more granularly. He predicted more alternative beta type strategies will provide flexibility to overweight the fund to a particular sector or risk exposure during investment cycles.
Singh will commence with Cbus on July 27.
