LAFPP prioritises DE&I in next year’s strategic plan

The Los Angeles pension investor has placed diversity on its list of values, alongside accountability, transparency and ethics.

The Los Angeles Fire & Police Pensions System is placing diversity at the centre of how it does business, according to a board meeting agenda published this week.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is top of the list for the $30 billion LP’s business goals for next year. The pension investor stated it will move to join the Institutional Limited Partners Association’s Diversity in Action initiative, which seeks to increase marginalised representation in the private equity industry. LAFPP also plans to designate a senior investment staff member to ILPA’s diversity and inclusion council.

The LP framed its emphasis on DE&I as the latest step to “improve the long-term sustainability and risk/return profile of the board’s private equity portfolio,” the LAFPP document stated.

LAFPP is also elevating diversity within its organisation by adding the term to its “list of values” guiding the investor’s strategic plan, alongside collaboration, respect, efficiency, accountability, transparency and ethics.

The context: LAFPP has had an eye on diversity in its private equity programme for some time. Its emerging manager programme has been investing since 2007 and in 2016 it extended its manager criteria to include firms owned at GP level by one or more people who identify as minorities, women, disabled veterans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. The fund said it was one of the first US pension systems to provide this access to the LGBTQ+ community, in its 2016 annual report.