Remote working, it’s a cinch!

It’s hard to believe how much has changed. Three weeks ago, today, the Lens travelled to Edinburgh for client meetings on the fringe of the PLSA Investment Conference. Even at this point, it was taking a bit of a chance, as companies were starting to restrict travel.  But in the Lens’s heart, we knew it would be worth it – and also that it would be a good while before we would be free to travel again.

We were right – we have been in isolation from the day after returning from PLSA! 

Edinburgh was beautiful and CAMRADATA has some amazing clients up there. However, from a conference perspective, the feedback was that it was about a one-third full.  The auditorium had trustees split out two metres apart. 

One of the best parts of our time there was talking to a couple of university pension managers who explained the difficulty of having members striking in relation to their DB pension, and to being able to ensure that their members – who are trustee-nominated and have no previous experience – are informed and educated. 

In the Lens’s view, the university pension schemes work in a similar way to the LGPS historically, with lots of individual university schemes but – from their perspective – the schemes are virtually impossible to merge into one as not only are they not keen on taking on other universities’ liabilities, they are all completely different in profile.

We are in a completely different world to three weeks ago when the Lens was footloose and fancy free, but these dedicated pension fund managers and trustees’ requirements have not changed – they have even more need to understand and communicate investments remotely.  And although we all love to travel, luckily at CAMRADATA everything we do can be accessed remotely and we continue to make sure our investors have everything they need to be able to do this. For however long, from wherever they are in the world…!