Presentation about the emergence, role and challenges of Executive Office at the Benelux Institutional Investors Roundtable, in Noordwijk, April 27, 2012

1. Executive Offices (Bestuursbureau’s)
of Pension Funds
Alfred Slager
Tilburg University, TiasNimbas Business School
April 26 2012, Noordwijk

2. Remember 1628?

3. 2012
• Pension funds’ organizations evolve:
– Coordination: Internal organization grows more complex
– Counterweight: Outside world more complex and challenging
• Executive Offices increase in importance, to
– Own policy and monitoring capabilities after spin off investment organisation.
– Separate policy and practice, focus on the “core” responsibilities of Trustees
– Organize countervailing power: pension fund’s goals ≠ asset manager’s.
– Be better equipped to manage pensions in increasingly complex markets.
– Coordination mechanism to cope with new (internal) units, organisations, etc.

4. Different structures emerge
1 2 3 4 5
Board of Trustees
Committees
Executive Office
Investment Manager
Custodian

5. Tasks Executive Office
• Support the Board of Trustees: organization and servicing meetings of the
Board and its committees
• Centralization to promote controlled, efficient and effective
management. Sets priorities and manages internal decision-making
• Ensure that key decisions and management responses to challenges are
consistent with the Fund’s mission, values and strategy.
• First point of contact with regulators, participants, journalists, etc.
• Carry out reviews and analyses of policy issues relating to the plan design.

6. Different approaches to Executive Office
Approach Description Executive Office
Resourcing Buying-in investment “Building blocks”;
services "as a market practice
commodity”.
Coordination/ Transfer to outside SLA Management
outsourcing suppliers of in-house
activities.
Co-creation Pooling of facilities to Product Resourcing
profit from Development
complementary R&D Agenda
expertise.
Outsourcing/Coordination Co-creation

7. Issues in a few years’ time
• Different shapes and sizes of “in control”
• Organizational growth of Executive Office
• Shift in agenda: your or mine beliefs
• Best/Worst of both worlds in decision making.
• Mandate fuzzyness
• Effectiveness

8. Different shapes and sizes of “in control”
Board of Trustees
Committees
Executive Office
Investment Manager
Custodian

9. Issues in a few years’ time
• Different shapes and sizes of “in control”
• Organizational growth of Executive Office
• Shift in agenda: your or mine beliefs
• Best/Worst of both worlds in decision making.
• Mandate fuzzyness
• Effectiveness

10. Shift in agenda: your or mine beliefs.
What about the Executive Office?
Pension fund Asset manager
Risk diversification Inefficiencies
Risk premiums Focus
Active
management
Responsible Impact
Investments Teams and staff
Risk man.
Goals

11. Issues in a few years’ time
• Different shapes and sizes of “in control”
• Organizational growth of Executive Office
• Shift in agenda: your or mine beliefs
• Best/Worst of both worlds in decision making.
• Mandate fuzzyness
• Effectiveness

12. 1628
• Don’t temper with a slim and
elegant design
• Top heavy is inherently unstable
• Respect the craftsman
• Clarity of roles
• Early warning signals