Delivering another year of service for our clients

After the ‘annus horribilis’ of 2020, we all started to get back to the ‘new normal’ in 2021. Everyone got used to working from a combination of home and office and businesses of all types returned to close to normal operations.

At Mobius Life we’ve been fortunate to be pretty much unaffected by the pandemic. All our pension scheme clients have continued to invest and markets, barring some increased volatility, operated ‘relatively’ normally.

This means we’ve been able to continue to innovate to meet the needs of our clients and develop additional services to help meet their increased reporting and governance requirements.

As a business we are totally driven by our clients’ needs - and here are just a few of the innovations and developments we delivered to help them achieve their goals in 2021.

➢ Manufacturing a Structured Equity solution: In early 2021, we rolled out River and Mercantile’s Structured Equity solution on the platform - a first for the industry. Pension schemes of all sizes can now structure a growth asset tailored to meet their specific requirements through the Structured Equity approach, without being restricted by legal and governance costs, resources and minimum fees.

➢ Offering access to illiquid credit funds: This year an increasing number of clients told us they wanted to access illiquid alternative credit funds. For many investors these funds are difficult to access directly, due to higher governance requirements, given the complexity of the fund structures and dealing terms. We innovated by harnessing our infrastructure to tackle the challenges associated with illiquid assets. This included making alternative credit strategies offered by Apollo and Alcentra available to DB schemes.

➢ Meeting ESG, climate reporting and transaction cost disclosure: New regulatory requirements for schemes to make annual disclosures on ESG investments, climate metrics and transaction costs has added new governance burdens to already stretched trustees. We innovated to provide trustees with scheme-specific reports, which saves them the need to collate reports at an individual manager level. Using the power of the platform and our strong relationships with managers, we can provide these reports quickly and cost-effectively for trustees, enabling them to receive all the information they require from a single source.

➢ Supporting DC consolidation: We are using the power of the Mobius Life platform to support DC consolidation where schemes wish to combine assets create operational and efficiency savings. This initiative supports the government’s drive to encourage DC consolidation. We have worked closely with industry leading providers to support net zero funds initiatives and access to private markets. Our ability to cost effectively transition and blend funds has enabled trustees to develop blended climate-related default funds, with further innovation planned to support net-zero initiatives.

➢ Supporting DB consolidation: We have been appointed by Stoneport, the UK consolidator for smaller defined benefit schemes, as its investment platform provider.

➢ Investing in our team: We have continued to invest in the Mobius Life team, increasing our headcount by around a third since March 2020, with additional expertise in our operations, client servicing and distribution teams.

➢ Engaging with the pensions industry: We held our first online event for the investment management community in April 2021. Over 100 delegates from 63 investment managers joined to learn more about Mobius Life’s platform capabilities and to hear the perspectives of an investment consultant and fund manager.

And finally winning top industry awards!

And to cap it all we won not one, but two prestigious industry awards – the Professional Pensions Institutional Investment Platform of the Year (for the third year running!) and The Pension Age Innovation (Investment) Award.

So, 2021 was another busy year for Mobius Life.

We have worked hard to meet our clients’ needs throughout the year and look forward to continuing to serve them in 2022.

Wishing all of you all the best for the festive season and the new year.