A team from Fairview Capital Partners of West Hartford set up a booth toward the back of the teeming bazaar of benefit providers hoping to sell their wares at the recent convention of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.
Many familiar Connecticut names were pitching plans — Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, ING, and Anthem.
But the Fairview Capital message to pension plan managers was different.
“Anybody can handle buying Blackstone ETFs,” explained Aakar Vachhani, a senior associate with the firm. “We offer diversity of investment options.”
In a world of risk and reward calculations, Fairview is offering a way to reach for higher rewards. While maintaining a lower national profile than the pension giants working booths nearby, Fairview Capital is a growing force. It manages nearly $3.5 billion in assets, including a $650 million portion of Connecticut’s state employee pension fund. Its goal was to expand its footprint and win a few $500 million pieces of the billions of dollars of assets represented at this convention.
The doom and gloom tenor of the conference likely worked in Fairview’s favor. Pension fund managers and trustees were reminded that the flood of Baby Boomers has begun to retire and that the trickle will become a flood soon. One estimate has 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day for the next decade. And 40 percent of them will live past age 90.
That’s going to put a strain on pension plans still struggling to recover from the ravages of the Great Recession. Fund trustees have a fiduciary responsibility to invest their money judiciously. That means they can’t put a few million down on red at Mandalay Bay’s roulette tables. But it doesn’t mean they’re limited to Treasury bills and a safe 2 percent return.
That’s where Fairview comes in.
“We invest mainly in venture funds,” said Mishone Donelson, a Fairview principal.
Donelson and Vachhani said they favor early and mid-stage investments in technology companies followed closely by investments in information technology for the healthcare sector. The risk is higher, they acknowledge, but so is the potential reward. And for pension funds facing liquidity issues, higher returns are necessary.
