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French (Canada) - Dutch Pension Plan
- 2025
- Equities, Global (with potential EM/DM separation)
- EUR 1.3bn
- Deliver an improved equity investment portfolio to meet the ESG and investment preferences of the members, at a controlled risk/return level and high value for money.
- Strategic advisory, Manager research and selection
Our specialist says:
The client wanted a thoughtful middle ground between active and passive management – one that meaningfully improves ESG characteristics without sacrificing the potential for outperformance or increasing costs significantly. It has been a pleasure working collaboratively to design and implement a highly customised enhanced ESG equity solution that aligns with their members’ preferences and governance needs.
A Dutch Pension Plan with EUR 1.3 billion in assets. Following a member survey and investment policy update, the plan engaged bfinance in 2025 for independent strategic advice and manager search implementation to enhance the ESG profile of its equity portfolio while balancing performance expectations and cost efficiency.
September
2025
Establishing areas of challenges
The pension plan was weighing up how to best enhance the ESG integration of its portfolio following an end member survey and subsequent ESG and investment policy update. The investor took the opportunity to review its entire portfolio structure and strategy, seeking independent, data based analysis from bfinance to guide it.
Balancing desire for greater ESG with low tolerance to underperform the equity market
How to reconcile a belief in the ability of active management to add value with market results
Desire for high customisation (now and in the future)
Need for governance and transparency in manager selection.
The investor required independent, data-driven analysis to guide decision-making on the future direction of its equity portfolio.
October
2025
How bfinance supported the client
Taking a holistic view of the investor’s investment, risk/return, and sustainability needs, bfinance provided data and analysis to address the pension plan’s key questions in an evidence-based fashion:
What are reasonable outperformance and tracking error targets for different solutions?
What is the optimal number of managers for our portfolio?
Should our portfolio take a global all countries approach or separate emerging and developed markets?
Provide a second opinion on actively managed and customised passive portfolio options.
What would bfinance’s ‘blue sky’ portfolio proposal be?
bfinance’s input allowed the investment committee to make confident and informed evidence-based decisions on the direction of their equity portfolio. Below are some extracted examples of this analysis.
December
2025
Additional priorities and client feedback
The data and analysis inputs from bfinance were used by the BAC to support its internal stakeholders such as the Board in comparing the pros and cons of different portfolio constructs.
Chose to pursue bfinance’s ‘blue sky’ enhanced ESG equity portfolio, a middle ground between active and passive at low cost
Engaged bfinance to implement the search review process for their EUR 1.3bn portfolio
Q1 2026
(Ongoing)
Strengthening partnership and addressing challenges
The tailored nature of the search process allowed the investor’s team to be involved in each step, understanding the landscape of potential manager partners and to shape the priorities of the search assessment. The BAC wanted to address unique questions in the search.
Does the alpha model select stocks with integrated consideration of the investor’s ESG requirements, or are portfolio ESG parameters a separate portfolio construction step?
Are factor weights dynamic or static, and what are the (dis)advantages of each approach?
Can the performance of ESG and the systematic alpha model be disaggregated for transparency?
How accommodating are managers of additional universe exclusions that may arise due to ESG or failed engagement reasons?
What happens if our strategic allocations to geographies such the US or EM are changed in the future?
How do systematic models compare across areas like turnover and transaction costs, differentiation of factor inputs, customisation of the model for different market segments, inclusions/exclusion of big index constituents?
This relationship and search process is ongoing, with bfinance supporting the investor as it continues to narrow the universe to identify a preferred manager(s) and refines its ideal portfolio solution through an iterative, collaborative process.
