Investment Advisory Services

Cardano offers the full range of Investment Advisory Services for UK defined benefit pension schemes, covering strategy, implementation and compliance issues, as well as services for defined contribution schemes.

We focus our defined benefit advice on improving and stabilising the scheme’s funding level. We do this through prioritising advice on the risk/reward decisions that will most affect the funding position. This typically includes asset allocation and liability hedging decisions. We adopt a ‘safety first’ approach, where risk management is just as important as generating strong returns.

We integrate a dynamic, thematic view of the world for asset allocation and hedging. To achieve this we typically adopt an 18 month to 3 year time frame when developing asset allocation and hedging advice, although recognise that some trustees will prefer a longer time frame. Our asset allocation and hedging views are grounded in current market circumstances and our outlook for the economy and financial markets. We advise clients to take all investment risks deliberately, based on the current situation and outlook, rather than be driven by current or historical asset allocation.

We also have extensive experience in advising trustees on the use of derivatives and liability hedging. We have over 40 people focussed on derivative design of Liability Driven Investment solutions and executed over €90bn of derivatives for our clients in 2011.