Pension Fund Providers Not Heavily Exposed to Russia
Published / Last Updated on 08/03/2022
Research by industry publication Money Marketing (MM) has found that most pension fund managers do not have a huge exposure to Russian equities in their funds.
MM spoke with Aegon, Aviva, Canada Life, Legal and General and Royal London. Whilst this list does not cover the whole fund market, given the colossal size of some of these firms it certainly gives an insight into Russian asset exposure across the whole retail facing investment funds market.
Legal and General, the ‘super tanker’ fund manager and just slightly smaller than Prudential, has £1.43 trillion under management and claimed in a recent press release it has just 0.1% of funds exposed to Russia and therefore sanctions. Other providers:
- Aegon suggests it does not have any exposure to Russia or Ukraine assets.
- Aviva suggests it has ‘negligible’ exposure to Russia, although given the size of Aviva, this may still be big numbers when
- Canada Life also claims it does not have any exposure to Russia or Ukraine assets.
- Royal London, a fast growing and successful mutual provider with £159 billion i.e. roughly a 10th of the size L&G, suggests it also has around 0.1% exposed to Russia.
Most funds that are invested in Russia will be the smaller ‘emerging markets’ funds and global funds rather than mainstream equity and managed funds.
All providers confirmed they were co-operating with and closely monitoring current and likely further sanctions.
Comment
Research has found that nearly 90% of UK consumers do not want their funds invested in Russia and happily, it would appear most if not all of us will have limited exposure. The reality, given that managers have likely total exposure of less than 0.1% mean that even if all Russian companies collapse or became virtually worthless then your investments would not suffer that much. The issue currently is the impact the invasion is having on global markets with markets falling by c 10% but note, they should recover when the situation stabilises, we hope very soon but who knows?