First State Super awards $1.6b mandate to Neuberger Berman

First State Super has awarded a $1.6 billion mandate to an independent investment firm, who is based in New York, to manage its emerging market equity customised factor portfolio.

First State Super awarded Neuberger Berman the mandate to provide systematic exposure to selected risk premia in emerging market equities.

Systematic beta portfolio manager, Eben van Wyk, said they worked in partnership with Neuberger Berman in 2015 to build this model, to systematically harvest non-market risk premia in emerging market equities, with controlled risk.

"We may eventually move this portfolio in-house alongside other strategies managed internally," he said.

First State Super acted as the custodian to over $71 billion in assets, which included $50 billion in superannuation and $21 billion in retirement savings, the fund said.

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nt managing director, Lucas Rooney, said: "First State Super liked our approach to factor based equity investing, which shows low correlation to competitors".

Neuberger Berman's head of quantitate investment group and director of research, Wai Lee, said his team's innovation, research and investment work made its way into many clients portfolios, through many different paths.

"We are very transparent, we publish a lot of our work as technical articles in investment journals. And we get good feedback from clients about that," Lee said.