NCSSF hires 21 managers for pension mandates

China’s $276 billion state retirement fund has named 21 domestic fund houses as the first batch of managers for the new public pension fund (PPF) scheme.

Of the previously named list of eligible firms, four have missed out on this round of mandates: two fund firms (Chengsheng and Guotai Fund), one pension/annuities firm (Taiping Pension) and one brokerage (CICC).

As expected, the appointed firms are already running mandates for the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and enterprise annuities.

The National Council for Social Security Fund (NCSSF), which oversees the NSSF, has named 14 domestic fund managers: Bosera, ChinaAMC, China Merchants, China Southern, China Universal, DaCheng, E Fund, Fullgoal, GF Fund, Harvest, HFT, ICBC-Credit Suisse, Penghua and Yinhua.

NCSSF has also hired three annuities/pension managers (Ping An Annuity, China Life Pension and Changjiang Pension), three insurance investment arms (Taikang Asset Management, PICC AM and Huatai AM) and one brokerage (Citic Securities).

NCSSF could not immediately be reached for comment.

The fund started inviting pitches for China public PPF mandates in late October.

The PPF reform involves provincial governments handing pension mandates to NCSSF, which will then outsource them to external managers.

NCSSF has already received two mandates of Rmb100 billion each from wealthy provinces Guangdong and Shandong, in 2012 and 2015, respectively. Other wealthy provinces, such as Jiangsu, Shanxi, Sichuan and Zhenjiang, and cities including Beijing and Shanghai, are expected to be next to award mandates, as they have each accumulated more than Rmb100 billion in PPF contributions.