This podcast is the latest in our collaboration with the Always a Pensions Angle podcast produced by DG Publishing. 

Peter Wallach is Director of Pensions at Merseyside Pension Fund, a position he took up in April 2007. He started his career in private banking, where he worked in the City for 12 years. In 1997 he joined Close Wealth Management as an investment manager, and in 2004 he joined Merseyside Pension Fund. 

Our discussion, which is Peter's first time being interviewed by Aoifinn Devitt, so his first appearance on the podcast, was a long time coming, in that Peter has been a long-term steady hand in the LGPS, combining investment acumen with operational insight.  Our discussion focused on the evolution at Northern LGPS and we asked what needed to evolve there to meet the new demands of pooling. Peter cites the benefits of collaboration between pools an effective way of delivering the government’s agenda and he mentions both GLIL, as well as a housing initiative that Northern is working on with LPPI. He also mentions the potential for collaboration with DC master trusts as they grow in scale. 

We touch then on the fund's responsible investment policy and how that will evolve under pooling and Peter mentions the fund's baseline as well as its interim milestones. He discusses the importance of targets not being too rigid while still being ambitious.