The argument for transparency in fiduciary management is not going away. Yes, many companies calling for third-party assessment themselves provide it, but that does not mean their views should be automatically dismissed.
Or sometimes they are managers like Cardano, which has a principled stance of performance disclosure, as its head of client management Emma Adair explains in last week's Informed Comment. But by the same measure, just because Cardano operates in this market does not mean its views should be disregarded.
Truth is, everyone that is involved in the provision or evaluation of these services has an angle, and it is down to schemes in consultation with their sponsors to decide what is best for them given the options on offer.
For Loomis, as you will have read, it was about the accountability that they felt their new manager would provide. But what is transparency without performance? Surely the two must come together.
But yes, they have a symbiotic relationship. One of the sticking points of these arrangements is how you measure success. The predominant view is that it has to be the funding level.
Illustration by Ben Jennings
But there are a multitude of factors that could help this level at no credit to the manager, or harm this level without it being the manager's fault.
"Good performance information and good independent oversight is crucial," KPMG's head of fiduciary management research Anthony Webb told me. Understanding the factors that are under the control of the manager, and the ones that aren't, is crucial to making a judgment, he argues.
It remains to be seen whether the secondary market takes off, even at the modest numbers that moved the sector on three to four years ago.
But perhaps more unsettling is that, aside from the improvement in governance structures, the jury remains out on the fundamental question as to whether fiduciary strategies work better than a traditional trustee-consultant-manager relationship. "We haven't been able to establish that outperformance causation," Webb admits.
Sometimes it is easy to forget that fiduciary management still operates on a fraction of defined benefit assets. Evidence that these strategies generally perform better will be important to their expansion.
Ian Smith is editor of Pensions Expert. You can follow him on Twitter @iankmsmith and the team @pensions_expert.
