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Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Stephen Gilmore – CalPERS' Total Portfolio Approach (EP.486)
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- [00:00]
Stephen Gilmore
One of the things that has attracted value from the CalPERS experience has been a tendency to be too pro cyclical. If you think back to the time of the financial crisis, various assets were liquidated, risk was taken off. That was done in part because of concerns about liquidity, concerns that didn't need to be acted upon. But there was an information challenge at the time. Information on liquidity has improved greatly since then, but risk was taken down. If you're a long term investor, that's exactly the time to be putting on risk. The same thing has happened when markets are more exuberant. Risk has been taken up. One of the big advantages of having a total portfolio approach with a reference portfolio is you tend to have a more stable risk appetite through time and it'll be transparent if risk is taken up or down. Management now becomes more accountable because under a strategic asset allocation, yes, the management can make a recommendation to the board on the saa. The board adopts it, then the question is who owns it? Because it's combined, it's a joint thing with our proposed approach for the total portfolio. The board adopts a reference portfolio and that corresponds to a particular amount of risk. But it's the management that is using its initiative to propose the portfolio and to invest the portfolio. The management becomes more accountable. It also becomes clearer how has the management team done relative to a simple off the shelf portfolio?
- [01:33]
Ted Seides
I'm Ted Seides and this is Capital Allocators. My guest on today's show is Stephen Gilmore, the Chief investment officer of CalPERS, which at $600 billion is the largest public pension fund in the US and one of the largest institution pools of.
- [01:51]
Interviewer
Capital in the world.
- [01:52]
Ted Seides
Steven joined CalPERS 18 months ago from a career spanning Wall street, the IMF and two of the most innovative sovereign wealth funds where he was Chief Investment Strategist at Australia Future Fund and CIO at New Zealand Superfund. Our conversation dives into the theory and implementation of the total portfolio approach, drawing on Steven's experience at Australia and New Zealand and his plans for CalPERS. We cover the TPA mindset, its fostering of sound governance and accountability, comparisons to strategic asset allocation, challenges of implementation and the adaptation of the model at CalPERS. Stephen is one of the most experienced practitioners of TPA in the world. Our discussion pairs well with my recent conversation with Ash B. Monk as more allocators learn and consider this approach to managing assets before we get going. Valentine's Day is right around the corner. I found there's two types of red in the air. The sweet scent of love and the red of jealousy, envy and frustration. It's love we're all after. In my younger years, I was a forlorn romantic in search of happily ever after. Once I found it the second time around, Much of Valentine's Day has been a beautiful thing. That's after the redness of stress that goes into the run up to the big day. For those still searching and feeling the red of jealousy, envy and frustration, know you're not alone. Many are in your shoes and the rest of us will tell you it's not all roses on the other side. So what do you do when you're feeling stuck and a little lost? Looking for a special someone or a special gift to give your special someone? We have an answer for you. Knowing that every top has a bottom and every love has heartache, we'd suggest a gift that keeps on giving. Better way to celebrate together than the love that comes from a premium subscription to Capital Allocators, where you get thousands of pages of transcripts, a weekly email with wisdom and hot takes, and a community of like minded lovers of the show. Our gift to you for this holiday? How about a 50% off your first year subscription? Just hop on the website and use the code weloveca50 for your discount. You can see the call notes for the capital w in we and capital ca in welove ca 50 since we want to share the love all year long, you can use that discount code anytime, not just in these weeks leading up to Valentine's Day. Capital Allocators is brought to you by AlphaSense. AlphaSense connects and accelerates every element of your research process, and I'm excited they chose to be our lead sponsor this year. One of the hardest parts of investing is seeing what's shifting before everyone else does. For decades, only the largest hedge funds could afford extensive channel research programs to spot inflection points before earnings and stay ahead of consensus. But channel checks are no longer the luxury they once were. They've become table stakes. And that's where AlphaSense comes in. AlphaSense is redefining channel research AlphaSense channel checks deliver a continuously refreshed view of demand, pricing and competitive dynamics. Powered by interviews with operators across the value chain, thousands of consistent channel conversations every month help investors spot inflection points weeks before they show up in earnings or consensus estimates. And the best part? These proprietary channel checks integrate directly into AlphaSense's research platform, which is trusted by 75% of the world's top hedge funds. With access to over 500 million premium sources from company filings and broker research to news trade journals and more than 240,000 expert call transcripts. That context turns raw signal into conviction. The first to see wins the rest. Follow check it out for yourself@alpha sense.com Capital Capital Allocators is also brought to you by Morningstar. What if data wasn't just a bunch of raw numbers, but a clear and decisive language to help connect investment strategies with long term investor needs in a constantly evolving market landscape? Morningstar created that language, bringing order and utility to insight rich data so you can prepare for your next opportunity, no matter the asset class or Market. Visit wheredataspeaks.com to see what Morningstar Data.
- [06:36]
Interviewer
Can do for you.
- [06:37]
Ted Seides
Please enjoy my conversation with Steven Gilmore.
- [06:42]
Interviewer
Stephen, wonderful to see you.
- [06:44]
Stephen Gilmore
It's great to be here, Ted.
- [06:46]
Interviewer
Take me all the way back to your start in finance.
- [06:49]
Stephen Gilmore
It goes back to university, studied economics, then went and lectured in finance for a year before going off to the Reserve bank in New Zealand, then went traveling, picked up a job at Chase Manhattan in London, derivative structuring, FX options, then a detour to the IMF for six years, then back to the markets with Morgan Stanley. I was an emerging market strategist, then went across to aigfp, was there for a while, then off to Future Fund in Australia, New Zealand, super, and now Kelpers.
- [07:25]
Interviewer
There's a lot of steps there. In your time at Wall street, what were some of the different roles that led you to understand how you thought about markets?
- [07:35]
Stephen Gilmore
It's an interesting question because you learn something in each role. When I was at Chase before the merger with JP Morgan, I got to sit in the dealing room and to combine different products. I got to sit with the swaps traders, the floating floating traders, the option traders, and I would structure transactions. Seeing things from different perspectives was very helpful. I still think about going through the pricing on a floating floating swap. That was insightful. Then moving to the FX options desk. It was quite a revelation because when you come from an academic background you think it's all about the formula and you don't really understand how people derive or how they trade implied volume. That was another lesson. There are lots of incidents like that. Those are two early ones that stand out.
- [08:26]
Interviewer
So along the stops, along the way. The last one you mentioned was aigfp, which for those who remember was part of the epicenter of the financial crisis. So I'd love to hear about your experience there.
- [08:38]
Stephen Gilmore
I was there during the financial crisis. I started at AIGFP in London, which Traded under the name Bonk Aig, which was the European arm from 2004 until 2009. I was working primarily on emerging markets. Had created an investable emerging market index business which was going pretty well. That was a fairly small part of what was happening at aigfp. The problematic part of the business related to Super Senior protection on multi sector CDOs. That became problematic with subprime. There were issues with liquidity. The repo market froze up. And we all know the story of what happened with aig. I learned a lot from that time. One of the things that really impressed me was the quality of the people at aigfp. They had really good people. I thought a lot of Joe Cassano who ran the place. He was super smart, very knowledgeable across many things. One of the lessons that came out, of course, was that no matter how good a person is, things can always go wrong. It was important to challenge, to stress test. One of the things that made it problematic for FP was it came down to liquidity challenges. Sometimes you can't anticipate that the repo market's going to freeze up. You can't necessarily anticipate how the rest of the market's going to perform. You always want to think about what can go wrong. Even though you've got brilliant people. In the case of fp, they stopped entering into new Super Senior transactions of that elk from late 2005, well ahead of the final denouement in 2007. 2008, it wasn't soon enough.
- [10:24]
Interviewer
What led you to make the move from Wall street to Australia's future?
- [10:30]
Stephen Gilmore
I'd been in the public sector and the private sector and I like both. After the financial crisis, I wanted something else to do. One of the opportunities that came up was to work with Future Fund in Melbourne. Being a New Zealander, it's closer to home. So I went off to Melbourne after a short period of time. I ended up running the strategy team there and thoroughly enjoyed it because the Future Fund had started in 2007, had quite a large pot of money. It was a startup with a lot of capital. So we had to think about how to invest. The Future Fund has actually been one of the beneficiaries of the financial crisis because it had a low risk portfolio going into the crisis. So it had a lot of cash to invest when assets were very cheap. It was a pretty exciting time.
- [11:22]
Interviewer
What did you see as the core principles of portfolio construction when you were there?
- [11:28]
Stephen Gilmore
That was largely shaped by the CIO at the time. Dave Neal, one of the core things was to have a joined up process to build a portfolio that was designed to achieve the ultimate objective rather than to have lots of segmented asset classes. Yes, they had asset class teams. The idea was to think of the portfolio as a whole, so you didn't have all these intermediate targets. That became known as a total portfolio approach.
- [11:55]
Interviewer
You saw that both at Australia and then later back home. New Zealand Super Fund. What are some of the subtle differences in two different sovereign wealth funds applying the total portfolio approach?
- [12:09]
Stephen Gilmore
You've got to understand the objectives of each of the organizations. One thing that I spent quite a lot of time thinking about when I arrived at New Zealand super was why Future Fund and New Zealand super did things quite differently. Future Fund was set up in 2006, started operating in 2007, so it was later than New Zealand super, which got going around 2003. They had a lot of similarities. Sovereign wealth funds both in Australasia. New Zealand super had larger risk appetite than Future Fund. The reason being it had a longer horizon. It was getting small contributions over a long period of time. The distributions from New Zealand super were going to be some way off in the distance. Future Fund had started with a lot of money to begin with. 60 billion Australian dollars. The last thing you want to do when you've got a big money to start off with is to lose a chunk of it. You're going to be conservative. They also started at a time when assets were cheap. They had a lot of liquidity and were able to benefit from those high prospective returns because of those cheap assets. That worked pretty well for a while. Future Fund was discretionary, active, a short horizon because the expectation was that they would have to make distributions to the budget come 2020. It turned out not to be the case and those distributions have been put off further and further. The team at the beginning didn't know that. If they had known that, I imagine the Future Fund would have had a higher risk appetite through time. But that wasn't the case. Going back to your question on the approaches to the total portfolio, you've got to think of what the objectives of the two organizations are and how they react to those objectives and also lived experience. Future Fund's lived experience was that discretionary investment worked reasonably well and also been reasonably cautious because when they started the reward for risk was quite high. New Zealand super had risk on during the financial crisis, had a large drawdown, had stuck with the strategy effectively and then became more structured in terms of the philosophy, adopted a total portfolio approach. Both organizations did that around 2010 New Zealand super was far less reliant on external skill. Tended to think more about having a stable risk appetite. Through time a lot of the active risk was more systematic trying to rely on the advantages that the organization had. Advantages like a long horizon, a very stable risk appetite and tried to take advantage of that mean reversion network. Well, both organizations have been very successful, but successful in different ways. In the case of New Zealand Super Turtle Portfolio approach, they have a reference portfolio. Future Fund Turtle Portfolio Approach doesn't have a reference portfolio. They both have an understanding of how much risk they're taking. So they will focus on that risk appetite. Future Fund will move around quite a lot in terms of active risk and it used to be quite discretionary. New Zealand super much more systematic.
- [15:26]
Interviewer
The concept of this one has a reference portfolio, this one doesn't. But both under the umbrella of total portfolio approach which lots of people are talking about now. What does total portfolio approach mean to you?
- [15:38]
Stephen Gilmore
It's more about a mindset. The most important thing is that the portfolio is built to try and achieve the ultimate objective. The ultimate objective for Future fund now is CPI plus 4 to 5. That's what the portfolio is constructed to do. In New Zealand it's less clear in terms of having a specific return objective. The focus is on the risk appetite and generating wealth for future generations of New Zealanders and it's to help the budget manage the cost of an aging population. But in both cases the focus is not on what is referred to as a strategic asset allocation. It's saying what's the best portfolio? And there's a competition for capital across the portfolio, across asset classes. In both cases, to the extent that.
- [16:29]
Interviewer
A strategic asset allocation approach has defined buckets, define targets that there are guardrails put in place. Sometimes you hear about total portfolio approach other than there's a reference portfolio that's got some simple stock bond risk appetite, it feels less guardrailed around what the expectation should be. How do you go from we want to achieve this objective to a portfolio construct underneath that, that someone on the board, a governance structure can get their arms around and say okay, this is our version of the total portfolio approach.
- [17:06]
Stephen Gilmore
Let's talk about CalPERS. For instance, under the strategic asset allocation which is currently in place, the management team has the discretion to vary the asset allocation within certain ranges. What we did was to look at how much that variation would aggregate up to in terms of the leeway management had been delegated. We estimated that that amounted to around about 450 basis points. Of active risk using all the policy ranges. With the transition to a total portfolio approach, we weren't asking for that much active risk. We were asking for more flexibility in how we used it. The guardrails are still there. In terms of the active risk, what has changed is that there's more discretion to deploy that risk. Active risk in different areas. With that additional discretion comes the responsibility to be more transparent. We will be more transparent with the board in terms of the proposed portfolio and the rationale for various strategies.
- [18:10]
Interviewer
After some time in the seat at New Zealand, how does one go from being home in New Zealand to being quite far abroad in California?
- [18:20]
Stephen Gilmore
I grew up in New Zealand. My first few jobs were in New Zealand. When I was at the Reserve Bank, I did what a lot of New Zealanders do, and that is take a year off to travel. That one year ended up being 30 years. I went from New Zealand, I ended up working in the uk, then working in the us, then back in the uk, then in Hong Kong, then back in the uk, then off to Melbourne, then Auckland. I also spent some time in Tajikistan when I was at the imf. Lived there for two years. For me, living in different places is normal. I've lived in six different countries, 10 different cities. It's not unusual.
- [19:02]
Interviewer
So geographically it fit. How did you end up professionally deciding to make this move?
- [19:09]
Stephen Gilmore
Well, I've been at New Zealand super for five years. It's a great place and it's nice being home. I got a call from a recruiter. They mentioned the Culver's role. Frankly, I wasn't that interested. It's a tough gig. But the call prompted me to think about it some more, to do some due diligence. I thought, there's so much potential there. When the recruiter called back, I was more open. And the recruiter immediately got Marcy on the phone. She's very persuasive and very engaging. Not long after that call, like the same day, the recruiter called me and said, we want you to interview the board subcommittee. Shortly thereafter I interviewed with the board subcommittee and great questions and I really enjoyed the interaction. That's when I wanted the role.
- [19:50]
Interviewer
In past conversations with Matt at New Zealand and Raf at the Future Fund, they both emphasized the importance of sound governance in being able to make the model work. What's your perception of the lived experience of CalPERS knowing they've seen lots of different CIOs over the years?
- [20:08]
Stephen Gilmore
One of the things that has attracted value from the CalPERS experience has been a tendency to be too pro Cyclical. If you think back to the time of the financial crisis, various assets were liquidated, risk was taken off. That was done in part because of concerns about liquidity, concerns that didn't need to be acted upon. But there was an information challenge at the time. Information on liquidity has improved greatly since then, but risk was taken down. If you're a long term investor, that's exactly the time to be putting on risk. The same thing has happened when markets are more exuberant. Risk has been taken up. One of the big advantages of having a total portfolio approach with a reference portfolio is you tend to have a more stable risk appetite through time and it'll be transparent if risk is taken up or down. I'd like to think there's a governance improvement there. I would also like to think that management now becomes more accountable because under a strategic asset allocation, yes, the management can make a recommendation to the board on the saa. The board adopts it, then the question is who owns it? Because it's combined, it's a joint thing with proposed approach for the total portfolio. The board adopts a reference portfolio and that corresponds to a particular amount of risk. But it's the management that is using its initiative to propose the portfolio and to invest the portfolio. The management becomes more accountable. It also becomes clearer how has the management team done relative to a simple off the shelf portfolio? It should improve accountability and those are all governance improvements.
- [21:53]
Interviewer
When you came into CalPERS with this thought, from your experience, you'd like to shift the portfolio to total portfolio approach. What did you find in the portfolio? In the process of trying to figure out this is the right TPA model for CalPERS.
- [22:12]
Stephen Gilmore
When I first came in, my focus wasn't on rapidly moving to a total portfolio approach. My intention was to spend three to six months listening, learning. We're about to start an asset liability management review which occurs every four years. The question for me was do I want to push to go down this route of a total portfolio approach now or do I wait four years and I didn't really want to wait. We really did this in a stepwise fashion. One of the first things we did was to show the board how a risk equivalent portfolio had done compared with calper's portfolio. It was revealing for people because you can take a simple combination of equities and bonds and it will track the actual portfolio very closely. And that'll be the case for most pension funds. Once I saw that reaction, I thought we should go further and take people on this total portfolio journey. I saw A few other things which made the process easier. You want to get the right alignment and you want everyone to be investing the portfolio as a whole. Some years earlier, Marcy had changed the compensation structure so that everyone got rewarded on the basis of the whole portfolio, not their asset class. That was quite important. The team had done a lot of work on liquidity, had invested a lot of time, a lot of efforts, and really good work was done on that. That was a particular advantage for looking at the whole portfolio. I saw some elements there which were really helpful when one wants to go down this route.
- [23:45]
Interviewer
How did you think about skill sets of a team that are accustomed to strategic asset allocation investing compared to this idea that you're going to compare assets across asset classes?
- [23:58]
Stephen Gilmore
One of the things with a strategic asset allocation is that you do have policy ranges you can deviate. In practice, teams tend not to deviate too far from benchmarks. There's a psychological element, conceptually. If you were to speed up the saa, process the review to do it more continuously, it would look more like a total portfolio approach. If you have that thought process, we're just going through the exercise more frequently and we're becoming less anchored to what the SAA is. That's getting you partway towards that mindset of a tpa. Thinking about how the competition for capital takes place, you have to go out and have some sort of common language for looking at different investments. That can be difficult because different asset classes think about returns differently. If you're looking at private equity, you'll think about IRRs, you'll think about multiples. If you're looking at infrastructure, you might think about discount rates. If you're looking at real estate, you might think cap rates. Some people will focus on money weighted returns, some people will focus on time weighted returns. You've got to come up with something that everyone can work with. That takes time. Likewise, when you're looking at the cost of capital, you have to be thinking about, well, is this a reasonable proxy, especially for the private markets, because you've got infrequent valuations, so that takes time as well.
- [25:26]
Interviewer
When you bring this down to Brss Tacs for CalPERS, considering the needs of that pool of capital, what reference portfolio have you recommended?
- [25:36]
Stephen Gilmore
We've recommended 75% equity, 25% bond portfolio. We've recommended an active risk range around 400 basis points. That's a growth orientated portfolio and it's a function of our time horizon. It's also a function of our funder status. We're just over 80% funded is reasonably similar to the current portfolio, a little bit riskier than the current portfolio, but not a lot.
- [26:01]
Interviewer
What common language have you come across those asset classes as you described? To start to understand how to compare the real estate asset to the public equity to the private equity, you should.
- [26:13]
Stephen Gilmore
Think about funding all the investments out of the reference portfolio, funding them out of some combination of equities and fixed income. In our case, it's U.S. treasuries you want to risk match the investment you're making with some combination of equities and bonds. In reality, it's going to be the equity risk that dominates. You're obviously looking at things like equity beta as one of the considerations. You've also got to be thinking about how you charge for illiquidity because if you are investing in a liquid asset, you've given up some optionality and that's of some value. How much, of course, will depend a bit on the institution, depending on how much liquidity you have. It also can be a function of base currency and currency hedging and so on. Those are some of the considerations as.
- [27:02]
Interviewer
You'Re getting ready to figure out how you're going to make these comparisons. Love to hear in your time at New Zealand or in your time in Australia, what was an example of comparing that common illiquidity premium that you would want from a private equity or venture capital asset to a public equity beta.
- [27:23]
Stephen Gilmore
In both of those countries? In New Zealand and Australia, a lot of the investing was offshore because they've got relatively small domestic capital markets. One of the biggest considerations related to foreign currency and the hedging of those foreign currencies. And of course for comparing assets, you would want to look at things on a hedged basis so you can compare across countries. That has implications for liquidity because in both Australia and New Zealand and Canada for that matter, when there's a negative shock, what is are going to fall but those currencies will also weaken. So there's a liquidity consideration that's different. If you happen to be a US based investor or it has historically been different, that's one consideration. You've got to look at the big factor, which is equities and you're normally looking at regression analysis, but then again you've got to think about what is the market value at a point in time and these things are infrequently marked. There can be a lot of discussion and debate. In the end, you want to get.
- [28:28]
Interviewer
Something that's reasonable as you go to implement. How do you think about in the context of funding some risk budget in the reference portfolio directly managed versus outsourced to managers.
- [28:43]
Stephen Gilmore
From A Culpa's perspective, we do manage some of the public liquid markets internally, but it's more difficult to do that in the private markets. It relates to skill sets, the size of the team, the breadth of expertise. I don't anticipate that we will be particularly active direct privates apart from co investment, but I expect that we will become more active in the public markets given the balance sheet management and our improved liquidity management.
- [29:15]
Interviewer
As you're looking at making these trade offs and particularly making these shifts over time, what does the data and information that you need to aggregate look like on a dashboard on your desk so that you can make an informed decision?
- [29:30]
Stephen Gilmore
Look, data and analytics are hugely important. One of the things we have been doing at Culpas is embarking on an effort to simplify some of the systems we're using to get that better whole of portfolio view. That's a multi year exercise. You essentially want to be able to aggregate in a common language. Historically we've tended to have best of breed applications by asset class. That can be great for a single asset class, but it's not so good when you want to combine everything. So you've got to be thinking about the right trade off between that asset class functionality and the whole of portfolio. Bias is to try and have a better view at whole of portfolio.
- [30:16]
Interviewer
What is it that you're looking at to understand what you own so that you know how markets might be impacting what's in your portfolio?
- [30:26]
Stephen Gilmore
A lot of the portfolio risk is going to be dominated by equity risk. The 75 equity 25 bond reference portfolio. That simple construct will do a good job of approximating what our actual portfolio looks like. So you can stress test may be that some things have a stress beta which is higher than what you might get with the 75, 25. Some things might be lower. What's most important is to be thinking about how the portfolio performs under different scenarios. People have looked at historical scenarios, they've looked at actual events. But of course any of these shocks that you're going to experience is probably going to be different from the past. There may be similarities, but you're not going to get an exact repeat because people have learned market structures are different and so on. Quite important to understand how the portfolio performs. Given a growth shock or given an inflation shock or given a real rate shock or a risk premium shock, other structural changes scenarios will play a more important role as we go forward. The reality is you cannot immunize the portfolio to all these different shocks because then you won't generate any decent return. It's more about understanding what might happen, being prepared for those. And if there are some outcomes that are unacceptable, then you can do something at the portfolio level to mitigate those risks.
- [31:50]
Ted Seides
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- [32:45]
Interviewer
Back to the show. So at any point in time, once you have your portfolio built out, the marginal investment you might want to make needs to be additive. Marginal contribution to the portfolio.
- [32:57]
Stephen Gilmore
Conceptually, yes. The practicality of course is difficult to compare every single investment with every other one. But if you have that common language, you can approximately do that. You've also got to look at the investments that are already in the portfolio. It's not just the new ones. Even the ones that are in the portfolio now continue to have to earn.
- [33:16]
Interviewer
Their place in a strategic asset allocation model. That incremental investment is probably someone's assessment of better alpha if it's a new manager. In public equities, we think that manager's better than the manager we have. Maybe in the construct of what we're trying to find, what might the similarities and differences be in that incremental investment? In a TPA approach with an saa.
- [33:41]
Stephen Gilmore
The asset class is probably thinking about how additive that investment is given the asset allocation. Let's say it's an asset class with a 10% allocation. They'll fill the bucket up to that 10%. Now, it could be that is suboptimal. It could be that the return from the marginal investment in an asset class is less than it could be in another asset class. Or possibly it could be that it's a lot better and the team should be doing a lot more. You could be underinvested or overinvested, depending on the relative attractiveness. If you've got a 10% allocation, you're probably going to look to diversify that portfolio. You don't want to have a too concentrated an asset class portfolio, but when you're thinking about its contribution to the whole portfolio, you should be much more comfortable in having a more concentrated asset class portfolio because it gets diversified away at the whole of portfolio level. Those are some of the differences. It's also one of the reasons why it's hard to hold an asset class as accountable in a total portfolio approach because the asset class may have been asked to do something for whole of portfolio considerations. The assessment of the contribution is really the contribution to the whole portfolio rather than just looking at the asset class on a standalone basis.
- [35:02]
Interviewer
If at any given time you identify an opportunity set that is a good fit for the portfolio and seems particularly attractive in that current environment, how do you think about sizing?
- [35:14]
Stephen Gilmore
You want the sizing to relate to your degree of conviction in the investment. You're also going to be looking at the overall portfolio characteristics. Typically, any individual investment isn't going to make that much of a difference at the whole portfolio level.
- [35:28]
Interviewer
How do you think about how to measure appropriate diversification in a TPA approach?
- [35:33]
Stephen Gilmore
Scenario analysis is important. Let's take a simple example. Equities and bonds, do they diversify? Is a bond exposure going to diversify an equity exposure? Well, it may. It depends on what's happening. Take the example of an inflation shock. If inflation goes up, nominal bonds are going to be hit. Equities are probably going to be hit as well. If you have a growth shock, it's going to be the opposite. Equity is going to benefit. Bonds are probably going to be hit. So bonds are diversifying there. You need to look at what's driving the event rather than simply looking at historical correlations. One needs to be thinking about multidimensional scenarios and to think about how the portfolio behaves given those scenarios.
- [36:20]
Interviewer
Among the tried and true principles that have worked for a long time for some of the strategic asset allocation models, rebalancing and private market exposure always comes up. How does the concept of mean reverting rebalancing work within a TPA approach?
- [36:36]
Stephen Gilmore
I don't see any difference. Future fund New Zealand super would be rebalancing. Typically, what you would do with the forms of total portfolio approach that I'm familiar with is you would have a target portfolio anyway. You would be aiming for something where you've got a reference portfolio, you're rebalancing the risk back the reference portfolio level. If you're the Future fund and you don't have a reference portfolio, you'll still want to think about equity equivalent exposure and they'll want to rebalance back to that. It will be similar in terms of the privates. That's an interesting one because with private market exposure you can't move that anytime you want because they're illiquid and the relationships involved. The investing teams will need to have clarity over a multi year Runway. In the organizations I've been in, there's usually some sort of Runway or plan over multiple years. The target portfolio has to take that into account so that the teams have decent planning horizon and so they can manage relationships.
- [37:48]
Interviewer
How have you thought about the trade offs of active and passive within the portfolio?
- [37:53]
Stephen Gilmore
In terms of reference portfolio example, it's passive. You will want to take active risk when you think you're going to get paid for it. It's as simple as that.
- [38:03]
Interviewer
How has that come through about where you're choosing to invest actively?
- [38:07]
Stephen Gilmore
It help us in the past, the equity team, the fixed income team, have been good at generating good information ratios. But it hasn't been scaled, which I found interesting because there have been constraints on the active risks that can be taken and subconstraints. I look at this and think, well, these are great information ratios in some of these strategies. Why aren't we doing more then? There's a question as to how far these can be scaled.
- [38:33]
Interviewer
One of the big differences in the seat today from where you've been is the size of the asset pool itself. What are some of the areas where scale helps?
- [38:44]
Stephen Gilmore
Size helps a lot. When thinking about the cost of transacting, you can improve your negotiating position because of your size. You can have very strong partnerships where the economics works for both parties. I see the benefits to that. We've been taking advantage of that in recent years in our private equity portfolio there was a period where we were underinvested in private equity and the strategy has changed. It's been particularly successful since 2022. The focus there has been on relationships. Having that partnership, having that alignment. A key part of that has been getting more co investment. There are economic benefits to that. That partnership works when you get better information flow. We've done a good job of selecting managers those things more likely when you've got a somewhat larger team and asset pool because you can cover more ground and you can get access. You can't necessarily scale in the same way on net. It is an advantage in an area like that. There are going to be some places where it's a disadvantage because you can't scale.
- [39:55]
Interviewer
What are some of those?
- [39:57]
Stephen Gilmore
If I was thinking about hypothetically statterhub or something, how much could we do?
- [40:01]
Interviewer
When you've decided there's a particular opportunity where it makes sense to pursue active management, how do you think about the size of an active manager, their assets under management as a fit for the CalPERS portfolio?
- [40:14]
Stephen Gilmore
Given our scale, it's hard to make small investments because they don't move the tile. Some of these emerging managers can be outperformers. You want to take advantage of that. So you need to find the right framework and mechanisms for getting access to those smaller emerging managers. The reality is that the bulk of the capital is going to be invested through larger managers because of the size of our portfolio.
- [40:39]
Interviewer
The governance boards guardians New Zealand Australia are thought of as very sophisticated investment pools of capital. And in the public pensions in the U.S. typically, the people serving on the boards do not come from finance backgrounds. How has that changed how you thought about approaching the portfolio?
- [41:01]
Stephen Gilmore
It's true the nature of the boards are different. The boards in Australia and New Zealand, the ones I dealt with, comprise investors. There's a different type of conversation, but KELP is the board. It was the ultimate governance body. Our move to a total portfolio approach pays attention to that. It's a management team that has the investment experience we should be accountable for becomes clearer. The board has the overall oversight. The asset liability management model remains the same. We've just moved to a reference portfolio and we define the active risk a little differently. Ultimately, there's more clarity around who is accountable. It's the management team that has the investment experience. The board has the governance experience.
- [41:48]
Interviewer
What are some of the subtle favorite features of yours that you've seen at TPA that you'd like to apply to CalPERS?
- [41:58]
Stephen Gilmore
One thing that stands out is aligning the act of risk to the level of conviction. If you've got lots of silos by asset class, you don't necessarily do that. Back to New Zealand Super, I used to describe the active performance of New Zealand super in baseball terms. If you look at all the different investment strategies, when I first looked at the analysis, I thought, well, actually the hit rate or the batting average is pretty ordinary. That's not that unusual. But the slugging average was amazing. The areas that it did best in, it had a lot of risk allocated. Those areas that it performed best in were the areas of highest conviction as well. That was something that has been a feature. That's something that's important for Kelpers. To think about where our advantages are and to make sure we're allocating capital proportionately.
- [42:50]
Interviewer
When more and more people are thinking about total portfolio approach, where have you found that others are well positioned to do it, that may not, or where they're really not going to be able to replicate it?
- [43:05]
Stephen Gilmore
It's probably smaller teams that are better positioned. In our case at CalPERS, yes, it's a larger team, but we had some of the enabling conditions, we had the alignment in terms of the compensation, the improvements in terms of liquidity management and we've got a capable team. Those things are all helpful. The fact that we'd embarked upon a data and technology transformation was also helpful. To make it work, you need to have good collaboration. That's a key thing. Having people that speak with one another aligned with the ultimate objective.
- [43:39]
Interviewer
How have you tried to bring that culturally from what you've seen, to operate in that type of collaborative way?
- [43:46]
Stephen Gilmore
One of the things we've done at the level of the leadership team is to call out collaboration when people are assessed for performance. Collaboration is one of the key leadership competencies. We've heightened that in terms of how much focus we give to it. There's focus on communication, outreach. We've had lots of questions and answers and discussions. When you do that in the big forum, people don't feel that comfortable speaking up. There's been a lot of outreach at the team by team level. Early on there was some discomfort in the private markets because people were thinking New Zealand doesn't have much exposure to private markets. The reality is Future Fund does. And if you look at the TPA adherents, they tend to have a bigger exposure to private markets. So there are a lot of misunderstandings because you've got to look at the organization and where its relevant advantages are. When thinking about the asset allocation, there's been an education process, Q and A listening discussion, and it's ongoing.
- [44:48]
Interviewer
How do you anticipate making investment decisions?
- [44:54]
Stephen Gilmore
The key is to make sure that you've got the right blend of bottom up, input and top down. When I think about the top down, you're thinking about the overall risk levels of the portfolio. You're thinking of the active risk budgeting and the way that gets allocated from the bottom up. You're wanting to make sure that you see the ideas being socialized and being shared across the organization. In the end, if you are deploying capital, you want to be confident that it's going to beat the cost of what you're selling. To invest it, you need that consistent framework for thinking about that. If someone wants to invest in infrastructure, we're going to effectively have to sell some equities and bonds to do that. If it's infrastructure, it's probably going to be a liquid. There's going to be some charge for that. The investing teams are going to have to be thinking about what's the opportunity cost of making this investment. And if everyone is looking at the same framework for assessing that opportunity cost, then you've got a model for making those investments. The teams will go out and try and find good opportunities. It may be that when you look across all the different opportunities that there are some relatively good ones in some areas and some that are less interesting. And we should be able to discuss that as a team and upsize those ones that look more attractive.
- [46:15]
Interviewer
When something's close on the margin, who ultimately makes the call?
- [46:20]
Stephen Gilmore
A lot of it's delegated down to the heads of the various teams. We raise the biggest questions to an internal committee of the various asset class heads. Ultimately, it typically is the head of the asset class that makes the call up to particular size.
- [46:36]
Interviewer
Do you bring the heads of the asset class together so they're not just thinking about their asset class?
- [46:41]
Stephen Gilmore
Absolutely essential. Internally we have what is called a total fund management committee. We meet fortnightly. We also have a similar committee that looks at the underwriting of deals, but those will only be the largest transactions. Those people get together fortnightly on these committees.
- [47:00]
Interviewer
As you think about stress test analysis in your risk assessments today, what most concerns you?
- [47:07]
Stephen Gilmore
When I look at our portfolio, you're exposed to growth. I would like to have a greater exposure to diversifying strategies. Those things are things in the back of my mind in terms of what causes me to lose sleep. It's probably there being some unfortunate event and it's hard to forecast. You hope that you have the maturity to look through that and to take advantage of those unfortunate events is probably a function of behavior. How do we react when some adverse event occurs? I think about that. Do we have sufficiently strong governance arrangements to have gotten through that pro cyclicality? That's been a challenge for us in the past.
- [47:53]
Interviewer
Have you thought about increasing use of technology, maybe AI in improving the efficiency or the output of the investment process?
- [48:01]
Stephen Gilmore
It's a continual process. We've spent a lot of time working on liquidity analysis, the analytics there. One of the things I did when I first came in to Kelpers was to say that New Zealand. I could see the portfolio on my phone. I can see lots of different reports. We Couldn't do that at Coplos when I arrived, but now I can see a lot of reports on my phone. The team have seized that. So really good initiative to make that work.
- [48:27]
Interviewer
With the breadth of asset ownership over a long period of time. Imagine there's a lot of data that comes from that. How have you thought about the potential for AI in improving what you can know?
- [48:40]
Stephen Gilmore
It's a hard one because I don't know that I can necessarily access all the data that would be relevant. We were early investors in private equity. It'd be great to be able to look at the lessons that were learned early on. But I don't know how accessible that information is. There are probably missed opportunities going forward. We can build information systems to capture more than we have in the past. That's an era where we should have a true advantage. Given our scale, given the connections, given the access that we have, given the.
- [49:14]
Interviewer
Seats you've sat in, you're particularly well positioned to understand how large allocators might change their investing over the next five or 10 years. We just love to get your thoughts on that.
- [49:28]
Stephen Gilmore
Allocators often think about the past and project forward. There's always a theme. There was the Yale model. Maybe it doesn't work so well now. Then there's a Canadian model. Maybe there's some issues with that as well. Now people are talking about tpa. It has to be fit for purpose. Going forward, TPA will get more attraction, but it's hard because you've got to have that collaboration. There's going to be more thinking about the privates versus publics because you can see the efforts to try and give retail access. Interested in how that all plays out?
- [50:04]
Interviewer
Any other general thoughts?
- [50:06]
Stephen Gilmore
Right now a lot of those entities, asset owners outside the US are conscious of the great exposure they have to US assets because the size of the US capital markets, the performance of the US equity market and so on. There's a desire to diversify away from the us that's probably going to be difficult because the other capital markets aren't as deep. The entrepreneurialism in the US is a standout, but it is going to be a theme over the next period of time. There's also going to be more thought about other regulatory interventions. I know that some regulations been scaled back. Issues of national security become more relevant, whether that's security or supply chains. I can imagine there are possibly going to be more natural security related factors to be thinking about when it comes to the financial markets. One thing that I wouldn't like to see would be forms of capital controls, but that's quite possible. So we need to think about those sorts of things, things that haven't been in play for decades. They were in play back in the 80s.
- [51:10]
Interviewer
How did you incorporate that into the implementation of the investment portfolio?
- [51:17]
Stephen Gilmore
It's less of an issue for us in the US than it is for others. It really is. Thinking about stress tests and scenarios.
- [51:26]
Interviewer
When you put together a series of stress tests, how do you think about what historical scenarios you want to populate it with or what future economic scenarios you put in that are enough, but not too much?
- [51:39]
Stephen Gilmore
We used to do this at New Zealand Super. I sprung a stress test on folks at Future fund back in 2011. We've probably done less of that at CalPERS. But recently we had a great little exercise which was initiated by the team and this was liquidity shock. When you design these things, you have to make them realistic. You want to get engagement from the team. I think back to the one we did recently. People came in on a Monday and they don't always do that because the core workdays for us are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We had all these people in the room. We had our treasury team, the ops people, the various asset class heads and the total fund people. And we had the shock that was designed by the people overseeing some of our liquidity management. We made it so that certain key people were away. It worked really well. A lot of lessons from it. Those are the sorts of things you need to do fairly regularly, exercise those muscles.
- [52:38]
Interviewer
I'd love to hear an example of an opportunity that you've pursued with the team at CalPERS that feels like just the right fit for this particular pool of capital.
- [52:51]
Stephen Gilmore
There are quite a few things that might be just the right fit in the sense of they are something that aligns with those advantages that we have, things like our time horizon size and so on. There are times when we can negotiate economics which we think are favorable to both sides. We have done some of that on private equity. The thinking with the total portfolio approach is more around, is this a good investment? If we think it is, it's less important where it sits. If you're sitting there with a strategic asset allocation and you've got all these asset classes, it could be that you've got a hybrid, where does it sit? Or there could be something that's new and you don't have a bucket for it, and it's hard to do. With the total portfolio approach, you look at what are the return and risk characteristics of this investment and does it make sense to the portfolio. If it does, you're more likely to do it.
- [53:49]
Interviewer
Now.
- [53:49]
Stephen Gilmore
It could be in an opportunistic bucket in an saa, but it fits more neatly in the total portfolio approach because you can think about cost of capital on a consistent basis across asset classes. Those sorts of things that might have fallen between the cracks are things that will be more relevant for us now, given the way we're moving.
- [54:09]
Interviewer
What do you hope the portfolio looks and feels like five or ten years from now?
- [54:15]
Stephen Gilmore
Five or ten years from now. I hope we're more fully funded than we are at the moment. A lot depends on what happens in the market. I would like to think that we have improved information systems, those regular scenario tests, and that we're comfortable with the range of outcomes. I would like to think that we have a greater range of diversifiers within the portfolio. I would also like to have a more systematic, dynamic asset allocation process in place. I would like to think we've got more of those things that would fit between the buckets in an SAA type environment, because I think that's an advantage for us now.
- [54:56]
Interviewer
So after the end of whatever stretch period of time, five or 10 years or longer that you're in this seat, what would feel like a success to you?
- [55:06]
Stephen Gilmore
It would be a success if we were more fully funded. It would be a success if people thought that KOPOS was using its potential better in terms of the asset and the mandate, the talent we have. It would also feel successful if people thought this total portfolio approach has worked.
- [55:27]
Interviewer
Oftentimes when you think of a public employee seat in the US it's very prestigious. It's a big seat, may not pay that much. There's some intrinsic pull that someone may have. Maybe their parent, in your case was a teacher or whatever it was. I'm curious what that is for you in a seat in California, not your homeland.
- [55:45]
Stephen Gilmore
I like the purpose. It's quite meaningful. We're investing for 2.4 million members. There's something about these asset owner roles that I enjoy. Because you get to work in the markets, which is intellectually interesting. You get to think about the economics and the politics. You get a seat at the table, you get involved in interesting conversations. It's a privilege to be able to do this, particularly if you're doing it for a good cause. Intellectually, it's great to keep learning. When you're dealing in the market, you have to keep learning. It's also good to solve problems. It's that combination of things that appeals.
- [56:24]
Interviewer
To me Siem, before I let you go, I want to make sure I get a chance to ask you a couple closing questions.
- [56:28]
Ted Seides
Before we get to the closing questions, I want to tell you about one of our strategic investments. We've made a few and each are working on a product or service we.
- [56:37]
Interviewer
Think will be valuable to our community.
- [56:40]
Ted Seides
One is Thema. For all the private equity managers out there, Thema uses AI to help map the landscape and source private businesses. It's incredible what a well designed AI tool can do to accelerate the discovery of businesses in private markets. There's a link in the show notes so you can learn more. And here are those closing questions.
- [57:01]
Interviewer
What was your first paid job and what did you learn from it?
- [57:04]
Stephen Gilmore
My first paid job was a student job. I was a laborer doing all sorts of manual work. That job brings back memories because I remember my first day on the job. A group of us started that day. We were given tools like crowbar, pick, shovel and we were asked to dig up a road. It was a metal road. It was hard work because we only had these tools. At the end of the day I went home. I had seven blisters on my two hands. My father looked at me and thought I needed toughening up. He got some denaturalized alcohol and just poured it on my hands because that toughens up the skin. It stung from that time. I wasn't sure whether they were testing us as new joiners, but it got easier after that. I enjoyed doing that manual work.
- [57:56]
Interviewer
Which two people have had the biggest impact on your professional life?
- [58:00]
Stephen Gilmore
People who know me know that I don't stick to the script. So I'm not going to mention just two people. The people that have had the biggest impact have been folks who've taken a chance on me. I did a master's degree in economics. Normally people in New Zealand who did that with golf and work in the treasury or the Reserve Bank. Did the Reserve Bank. Later I was offered a job at the treasury but didn't go there. I was offered a job at one of the universities in New Zealand to lecture on finance. I hadn't studied much finance, but they wanted an economist. I thought, oh, that's good, I'll do that. So that was Lyle Maclean, who was the dean of finance, accounting and finance at Otago. He took a risk on me. I enjoyed that. And I got to spend some time with Simon Beninga. He wrote one of the standard texts on financial engineering. He was teaching us option pricing and that got me thinking more about finance. I went from there to the Reserve Bank. Then when I went traveling, I picked up a job at Chase Manhattan. That was a bit of a risk. I'd come from a central bank. I got parachuted into derivative structuring. It was Sykes Wilford, who was one of the senior people at Chase who took that risk with me. That was great. Imf, same thing. Moving from FX options to imf. I had that central bank background so it wasn't such a leap going back to the market. Same thing. People at Future Fund, Dave Neal took that risk hiring me. It's those sorts of people who've been prepared to take someone who's come from maybe a non linear role.
- [59:41]
Interviewer
What brings you the greatest joy?
- [59:43]
Stephen Gilmore
I really like walking in the mountains, in the bush, being with nature from a professional perspective. I like seeing people grow. It's great seeing people you're working with or people who work for you do well. They make you look good. I really get a kick out of that. I like solving puzzles and of course, spending time with friends and family.
- [60:03]
Interviewer
How's your life turned out differently from how you expected it to?
- [60:06]
Stephen Gilmore
It's turned out very differently. If you'd asked me when I was a teenager what I was going to do, I thought I would work in the wildlife service. I wanted to spend time outdoors. I didn't think I would be living in other countries. So quite differently.
- [60:24]
Interviewer
Last one, if the next five years are a chapter in your life, what's that chapter about?
- [60:29]
Stephen Gilmore
It's probably about what you've already asked. How have things gone at Calpers? I would like it to be a story of success. I would like it to be a story of fulfilled potential. I would also like it to be a story of using my leisure time better and doing the things I enjoy.
- [60:45]
Interviewer
Stephen, thanks so much for joining me. It's so great to hear about your latest seat.
- [60:49]
Stephen Gilmore
Thanks very much, Ted.
- [60:50]
Ted Seides
Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, hop on our website@capitalallocators.com where you can access past shows, join our mailing list and sign up for premium content. Have a good one and see you next time.
- [61:06]
Podcast Disclaimer
All opinions expressed by TED and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Capital Allocators or their firms. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Capital Allocators or podcast guests may maintain positions in securities discussed on this podcast.