APG sustainability chief urges INREV to embrace infrastructure

INREV needs to embrace the infrastructure sector to ensure that the best practices developed for non-listed real estate funds are also applied to this asset class, Angelien Kemna, chief investment officer at APG Asset Management, told delegates at INREV's annual conference in Vienna last week.
'We need more involvement from the sector to enable infrastructure to mature further,' she said.

Kemna called on the Amsterdam-based organisation for the non-listed sector to helP draw up guidelines for independent valuations, simple business models, standardisation, uniform independent benchmarks and liquidity provisions. 'If we don't get independent valuations, we'll have to sell,' she warned.

APG is the asset management arm of Dutch pension fund giant ABP and one of the biggest players in the global real estate arena with more than EUR 20 bn assets under management.

One of the challenges pension fund administrators face in the post-crisis environment is being cost-efficient and providing more information to clients so that they understand why certain strategies are pursued, for example in the case of alternative investments and non-listed real estate, even when they are more expensive, Kemna said. As the industry attempts to redefine itself in the wake of the crisis, investors and fund managers should not make things too difficult and hide risks by changing the definitions, she added.

'We all realised we had gone too far with financial engineering and lost sight of whom we are working for. What we are now doing is a financing redesign, but we don't have to make it complex...We need to make it simpler, more effective so that we are able to explain it to our clients.'

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