The Iowa Public Employees Retirement System (IPERS) has issued a request for proposals for active investment management services, saying that it will seek top-performing managers regardless of the manager’s asset class or benchmark.

The $31bn system is looking for a separately managed account that gives the manager full discretion to actively implement their investment selection and portfolio construction process, as long as the investments are primarily comprised of liquid, publicly traded securities. IPERS is also looking for public market investment products that show “persistent risk-adjusted alphas that are uncorrelated with IPERS’ strategic asset allocation, liabilities, and the alphas of other public market products within the IPERS investment program.”

Wilshire Consulting, which is assisting IPERS with the search, said that the unconventional RFP will help the pension fund take a more holistic view of
its public markets portfolio options and identify top-performing managers
across a range of traditional asset class “silos.”

“This search is unique in the way that IPERS is approaching it, which is taking a deeper dive into the excess returns that managers are producing in relation to their benchmark,” Ali Kazemi, managing director at Wilshire, told MMR.
Published by Money Management Report/Pageant Media.

Read the full story: Iowa launches unconventional RFP to seek alpha unconstrained by asset class

Published by Money Management Report/Pageant Media.