We partner with external investment managers who execute investment strategies on our behalf.

These managers have a detailed understanding of our investment strategy and our internal investment team works closely with them to seek out the best investment opportunities around the globe.

A list of our external managers at 30 June 2019 is available at Appendix A.

We prefer fewer, more meaningful, relationships with external managers. We select managers for their ability to generate information and insight, their willingness to genuinely collaborate and share knowledge and for the breadth of their collective coverage.

Our focus on alignment and building relationships has improved the quality of investment opportunities available to us and helped to make our dynamic investment process more efficient.

Using investment managers also aligns with our preference to keep our internal investment team as small and nimble as possible, while being as large as is necessary to cover our investment universe. This allows the team to focus on key investment decisions rather than being drawn into day-to-day asset management.

Our investment manager selection process is designed to deliver high quality partnerships, and to ensure that the portfolio construction does not lead to excessive concentration of manager risk in any one investment manager. We seek the best commercial terms available and favour those that are appropriately structured.

Appropriately experienced investment professionals are responsible for undertaking investment manager and asset due diligence. These professionals apply a structured framework to assess the manager or asset and bring forward a recommendation to the Manager Review Committee or Asset Review Committee as appropriate. We undertake regular reviews of external managers after appointment.

Due diligence incorporates assessment against agreed evaluation criteria and includes desk research, third party research, site visits and interviews.

We undertake detailed operational due diligence and use external advisers to undertake specialist due diligence or supplement the internal due diligence work as required.