Issue - meetings

To provide Committee Members with the Clwyd Pension Fund’s draft Annual Report and Accounts for 2021/22, for consideration and to make Members aware of the response to the 2021/22 Audit Enquiries letter

(a)          The Committee considered the Fund’s draft Annual Report for 2021/22 including the draft Statement of Accounts.

(b)          Members noted the Audit Enquiries letter and response

Mrs Fielder confirmed that the 2021/22 annual report was due to be published before 1 December 2022 which included the audited accounts. She thanked Mercer for their support in the production of the Annual Report due to the departure of the Fund Accountant in April 2022.   Mrs Fielder explained that Mr Ferguson, the Fund’s Section 151 Officer had reviewed the accounts and any comments from him had been taken into account.  She also confirmed that the Fund complied with the CIPFA guidance produced in 2019 called “ Preparing the Annual report” as much as was able.

Mrs Fielder went through the annual reporting highlighting a number of areas including the following key points:

-       The Independent Adviser’s report and Pension Board report highlighted the approval of the cyber policy,  excellent progress on the Fund’s responsible investment priorities and targets as well as the continued improvement in administration despite the rise in case numbers.

-       The administration report in appendix 4 reflected that, since the pandemic, employees continued to work from home during 2021/22. Productivity remained high and the number of cases completed exceeded 31,000 during the year.  The registration for the member self-service increased from 36.1% to 48.4%. 52 of the 54 employers in the Fund now used iConnect.

-       At 31 March 2022, the Fund had maintained a fully funded position as per pages 83 to 86 in the Funding and Flightpath item. As the Fund was in a valuation year, the funding position would be formally reviewed, and the risk management framework would monitor the impact of rising inflation and interest rates which continued after the accounting year end, and these will be considered as part of the assumptions setting.

-       The Fund performed well in the year as outlined on pages 85 to 103 as the Fund achieved an investment return for the year of 13.3% against the Fund benchmark of 9.1%. The local authority average for this figure was 8.6%. This placed the Fund second in the universe of peer LGPS Funds.

-       Highlights were the best ideas portfolio which achieved 20.3% and the private markets portfolio which returned 26.4% in aggregate, of which private equity returned 36.0% and the local impact portfolio returned 40.3%. In contrast, global and emerging market equities returned 2.3%, which was a reversal of the previous year’s return of 42.2% when private markets only managed to return 4.6%.

-       The Fund continued to make commitments to private market assets favouring those with a sustainable impact or local remit.

-       During the year, more assets were transitioned to the WPP, namely emerging market equities. The 10% strategic allocation was now managed by Russell Investments which brought the Fund’s total investments in the WPP to 32%.

-       The fund accounts were shown on pages 104 to 139. The main areas to note were that:

o   Assets which included cash but excluded net assets increased from £2.2 billion to £2.5 billion.

o   Contributions from employees and employers increased by £3.4 million.

o   Transfers  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14