The festive season is well and truly upon us, and here in CIS we’re celebrating another year of collaboration, innovation, success and growth!
Read on for some recent business updates, and a festive message from Head of CIS Jess Williams.
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Welcome to the team!
A very warm welcome to Shyam Udayakumar, who joined the team in November as a CIS Performance and Reporting Analyst. Shyam will work alongside Clotilde, Alex and Angela in our reporting function to ensure we can continue to meet the ever-evolving needs of our platform clients in this area.
So, heading into 2025 we have a full house! Having grown both our client relationship and reporting functions this year, CIS is ideally placed to onboard new schemes while continuing to deliver the bespoke solutions our existing clients have asked us for – as always, working in partnership to understand, anticipate and address their changing requirements.
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Industry awards
Huge congratulations to the one and only Jess Williams, who was crowned Leader of the Year at the 2024 PMI Pinnacle Awards! She was also Highly Commended at this year’s Women in Investment awards in the Distribution Woman of the Year category.
As Head of CIS, Jess has been instrumental in driving the success of our platform business. Her commitment to building strong and trusted partnerships with our clients and their advisors, and to understanding their priorities and long-term goals, ensures that we can support them in delivering their evolving investment strategy. We’re thrilled that her achievements have been recognized within the industry.
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Industry events
Over the past few months, we’ve attended or participated in a number of industry events, which provide important opportunities to engage with our market, share best practice, and collaborate on solutions to address current and future challenges.
This year’s PLSA Annual Conference in Liverpool included some fascinating discussions around pensions adequacy, private markets, DB buy-out versus run-on, and international learnings from our overseas industry counterparts. It was fantastic to see so many familiar faces – and of course meet plenty of new ones!
In November, Strategic Relations and Business Development Manager Kieron Snow took part in XPS Group’s webinar: Grasping the DC private market opportunity – What, why and how? Focusing on the key implications of the Chancellor’s Mansion House speech and actions for DC schemes, Kieron provided an insight into the role of platforms in breaking down operational barriers to DC private market exposure. You can access the recording here.
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New fund launches
This quarter saw the launch of the Schroders Capital Climate+ LTAF and the Schroders Greencoat Global Renewables+ LTAF – the first Long-Term Assets Funds to be made available via our platform, and an exciting milestone as we continue to expand access to private market assets for our DC clients.
Schroders Capital Climate+ LTAF: A multi-private asset fund with a focus on climate mitigation, climate adaptation, natural capital & biodiversity and social vulnerabilities. Find out more.
Schroders Greencoat Global Renewables+ LTAF: A diversified portfolio of energy transition infrastructure assets, with a focus on decarbonisation of power generation, electrification of energy use and efficient management of intermittent renewable energy. Find out more.
In addition, we’ve launched three more LDI funds from Columbia Threadneedle to expand the range available to our DB clients.
You can access our latest fund list here.
A festive message from Head of CIS Jess Williams
“As 2024 draws to a close, I’d like to reflect on what has been a pivotal year for CIS as we continue to grow our platform business - and to offer a small taste of what’s come in 2025.
“I’m incredibly proud to lead a team of investment only professionals whose commitment and expertise have brought us continued success this year. Within investment operations, we continue to deliver pricing accuracy of over 99.99%, which equates to just one pricing error in over 9 years! And our reporting colleagues succeeded in achieving their highest client delivery rates to date, delivering 100% of all Q2 reporting within 24 hours of agreed SLAs.
“We’ve listened to our clients and provided service enhancements that meet their evolving needs – from our market-leading ESG report, aimed at members as well as trustees, to our new Client Reporting Portal, which provides secure, customized, on-demand access to all scheme reporting.
“We’ve also been busy strengthening our platform proposition to meet the needs of a market that’s constantly evolving. We’ve given our DC clients access to a broader range of private market assets – including private equity, private credit and infrastructure – and have also launched the first LTAF on our platform. This means they can build a more diversified portfolio with higher potential investment returns for members, while contributing positively to climate and social impact. And for DB clients, we’ve not only enhanced our LDI capabilities but are now developing a range of solutions to support their longer-term ambitions.
“Looking ahead, we have a number of platform enhancements in the pipeline to provide additional capabilities for the schemes we work with – and those still to join us! One key area of focus for our DC clients is the ability to offer suitable at- and post-retirement options, so we’re working hard to support them in this area. For our DB clients, support for buy-out or run-on is also high on the agenda.
“I’d like to thank all of our clients and other industry partners for your ongoing support this year as we continue to strengthen and grow our platform business – we’ve worked hard together to achieve some amazing results, and I’m excited for what’s to come in 2025! But before we begin the next stage of our journey in earnest, I’d like to wish you and your families all the very best for a fun-filled festive season and a Happy New Year ahead!