IMRF - Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund

01/19/2022 | News release | Distributed by Public on 01/19/2022 14:51

IMRF becomes Diversity in Action Initiative Signatory

January 19, 2022

The Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) engages, empowers, and connects limited partners to maximize their performance on an individual, institutional, and collective basis. ILPA has more than 5,000 members comprised of small and large institutions including public pensions, corporate pensions, endowments, foundations, family offices, insurance, investment companies, development financial institutions, and sovereign wealth funds. The ILPA launched a Diversity in Action Initiative in December 2020. The Initiative serves as a means for General Partners and Limited Partners to publicly acknowledge their commitment to take concrete steps to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, both within their organization and the industry more broadly.

IMRF is proud to be a Diversity in Action initiative signatory. To achieve this status, IMRF established a framework of actions spanning talent management, investment management, and industry engagement to promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) within our organization and in the wider industry. As a signatory, we participate in regular roundtable discussions, working groups, and surveys to provide the industry with greater transparency on the state of DEI today, and on DEI best practices that will move private markets forward.

Over the last decade, IMRF's Board of Trustees is proud to have adopted policies to increase:

  1. Utilization of emerging investment managers,
  2. Racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of fiduciaries, including consultants and senior staff,
  3. Utilization of minority-owned broker-dealers,
  4. Utilization of minorities, women, and persons with disabilities for all contracts, and
  5. Utilization of minority-owned investment managers.

As of December 31, 2021, IMRF's market value was $54.87 billion. IMRF utilizes sixty-two investment management firms owned by minorities, women, or persons with disabilities to manage $13.4 billion. This represents 23.6% of the total IMRF investment portfolio across domestic equity, fixed income, international equity, private equity, and real estate asset classes. Learn more here.

In addition, during 2021 IMRF awarded contracts to 19 firms owned by minorities, women, or persons with disabilities for projects unrelated to investment management. Expenditures on these contracts totaled $3,613,294.48, or about 26.6% of all vendor spending for projects unrelated to investment management.