Recent years have seen significant growth in the OCIO, or “Outsourced Chief Investment Officer” market for pension schemes. Sion Cole, Head of UK OCIO Business, BlackRock, discusses this sector market growth, along with common misconceptions. He also highlights the relevance of OCIO managers as more schemes move to buy-out and his predictions for the future of the market.

What are the benefits of OCIO for a pension scheme?

We see many benefits of OCIO for pension schemes, their trustees, sponsors, and members.

The first is increased efficiency. We have seen the investment and regulatory landscape constantly changing, creating more work for trustees. Using an OCIO provider considerably reduces this governance burden for trustees and the sponsor. When schemes choose to have everything under one roof, investment decisions become more efficient. We can make real-time decisions, not restricted by trustee meeting cycles. For example, we were able to act swiftly on behalf of our OCIO clients during market volatility in 2022. We act on behalf of the trustees, so they don’t need to sign off on day-to-day asset allocation or manager changes.