Waltham Forest's Pension Fund has underperformed its benchmark by 6% over the past year, according to a report presented at the Pension Committee meeting on 2 July 2025. The fund's investments, valued at £1,131.6 million as of 31 March 2025, have seen a decrease of £43.3 million since the previous quarter.

The report highlighted that the fund returned 1.7% against a benchmark of 7.7%. This underperformance was attributed to several factors, including the drag on returns from specific investments such as the LCIV Global Alpha Growth Paris Aligned Fund, LCIV Global Equities Focus Fund, LCIV Emerging Market Equity, and the Darwin Property Leisure Fund.

Several managers were identified as underperforming:

  • LCIV (Baillie Gifford) – Global Alpha Growth Paris Aligned Fund: Returned -6.9%, underperforming the benchmark of -4.2%. One-year relative performance was -1.1% compared to the benchmark's 5.3%.
  • LCIV (Longview) – Global Equity Focus Fund: Returned -4.4%, slightly outperforming the benchmark of -4.7%, but one-year relative performance was -1.5% compared to the benchmark's 4.8%.
  • LCIV (JP Morgan) – Emerging Market Equity Fund: Returned -1.6%, underperforming the benchmark of -0.1%. One-year relative performance was 1.3% compared to the benchmark's 5.8%.
  • Darwin Leisure Property Fund: Returned -1.9% over the quarter, with an annualised return of -20.3% over the three years to 31 March 2025.

The committee noted that the strategic performance target of the fund to recover its deficit is the Consumer Price Index + 2.25% (5.35%). The fund was not on target to meet its overall strategic target at the time of writing.

Materiality thresholds for the pension fund's financial statements and audit procedures.
Materiality thresholds for the pension fund's financial statements and audit procedures.Source: Pension Committee papers, 2 July 2025

While the report highlighted underperformance in certain areas, it also noted that the overall performance statistics for key work items against targets for the period 1 January to 31 March 2025 show that the overall performance is maintaining its high performance, and is ahead of the target, Q4 (target 96.7%, Waltham Forest 99.87% and whole service 99.89%).

The committee discussed potential actions to address the underperformance, including inviting the London CIV to a future meeting to discuss the performance of their managers. Officers also suggested inviting Global Infrastructure Partners to the next Committee meeting to understand the investment, commitments and Performance of GIPII, GIPIII and GIPV Infrastructure Funds.

The Pension Performance Report June 25 also included a summary of pension fund expenses, showing an underspend of £145,000 compared to the forecast outturn.