139: Neuberger's Steve Meier – Do You Know the Risks You Own? TPA at NYC Retirement Systems

In this episode of the [i3] Podcast, Conversations with Institutional Investors, we speak with Steve Meier, who is the Vice Chairman of Neuberger's Institutional Client Group. Before joining Neuberger, Steve was the Chief Investment Officer for the New York City Retirement Systems, the third largest public pension plan in the US, consisting of five different plans. There, he implemented the total portfolio approach (TPA). Steve recently published a paper about the lessons he learned from implementing TPA at the fund, titled 'Case Study: Implementing Total Portfolio Thinking at NYC Retirement Systems', which we will explore in this conversation. Follow the Investment Innovation Institute [i3] on Linkedin Subscribe to our Newsletter Explore our library of insights from leading institutional investors at [i3] Insights Overview of podcast with Steve Meier of Neuberger  03:00 I knew we were heading in the direction of TPA but I didn't want to freak people out with a certain nomenclature 06:00 I think an SAA is compatible with a total portfolio approach 07:00 There has been a lot of work done by CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost to get support from the board for TPA 09:00 My experience is that an SAA is more granular than a reference portfolio 17:30 We hired external managers that could be tactical on our behalf. With a US$300bn portfolio it is hard to be tactical at scale 21:00 We didn't have an incentive compensation pool at NYC, so that wasn't one of the levers that I could pull 25:30 We had five plans that each had their own consultant. The firefighter plan had a funding ratio of only in the 80s, and that was largely because of 9/11. We lost 346 firefighters that day. 28:00 At the heart of TPA, there is an element of being very factor aware 31:30 We put together the BAM university so trustees could learn about how we made better decisions and we had a thought leader speaker series where I interviewed senior figures in the industry, including voting members of the Fed. 43:00 The case of Irene Triplett, the last remaining survivor of a Civil War pension plan. That is 155 years later and the plan is still paying out a benefit. We are long-term investors. 46:30 I do believe we are seeing a convergence of public and private markets Full Transcription of Episode 139 Wouter Klijn (00:00): Welcome to the i3 podcast. I'm here today with Steve Meier, who is the Vice Chairman of Neuberger's Institutional Client Group, and who was previously the Chief Investment Officer for the New York City Retirement Systems, the third largest public pension plan in the US, consisting of five different plans. Today we're going to talk about the Total Portfolio Approach (TPA), and in particular, the NYC Retirement Systems' version of it. Steve recently wrote a paper titled "Case Study: Implementing Total Portfolio Thinking at NYC Retirement Systems." So, let's talk about that. Welcome to the show, Steve. Steve Meier (00:42): Great, Wouter. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Wouter Klijn (00:45): So, when you were at NYC Retirement Systems, you didn't quite call it TPA—that seems to be a bit of a later name or interpretation. Can you tell me a little bit about your thinking around this system and how you referred to it? Steve Meier (01:01): Sure, absolutely. When I first joined the New York City Retirement Systems—and just to be clear, there are five separate and unique investment plans with five boards of trustees totalling 68 trustees, five separate investment policy statements, five separate general consultants, and a matrix of nine specialty consultants. There's a level of complexity just in terms of the organisational structure around managing the public pension plans for the city of New York. We had about 800,000 beneficiaries and participants, so it was a real honour to actually work in and lead that organisation for a little under four years. When I first joined, my first observation was that there was not an appropriate amount of collaboration across the teams. I tried to implement more of a non-siloed mindset to get people to work together, integrate the teams, and flatten the organisational structure. I wanted to give everyone a voice and open up the investment committee. Prior to my joining, the only participants in the investment committee discussions were the asset class heads. I opened it up to the entire 130-person organisation to really get more brains in the game and use it as a developmental tool. I did a number of things organisationally to force the integration of the teams, get the very best out of our tremendous individual talent, and challenge people to think more holistically about the portfolios and exposures. I wanted them to think: if they were the CIO, how would they want to see the portfolios positioned and presented? More importantly, for each incremental investment we put into the portfolio, how would that impact our overall exposure? Wouter Klijn (02:56): Yeah, so in hindsight, when did you start to realise that this is pretty similar to what is now called the Total Portfolio Approach? Steve Meier (03:04): Well, I suspect that all along we were moving on that path. I didn't want to freak people out by giving it a certain nomenclature or name. For us, it was really a journey and evolution of our thinking and capabilities. What I truly focused on when I first joined is the Japanese concept of Kaizen, which means a focus on continuous improvement with the ultimate goal being excellence—which you never really reach. But as fiduciaries, I tried to challenge my teammates into thinking we have an affirmative obligation to eke out every last quarter of a basis point in terms of performance. At every turn, there's a way we can improve how we interact, how we think, how we behave, and ultimately how we invest. Listen, the markets are dynamic, things are constantly evolving, and technologies change. We're certainly in the midst of reincorporating a revolutionary, transformational technology into our thinking and practices, but it was really a recognition that we could always do better as a starting point. Wouter Klijn (04:11): Now, I think your case study is quite interesting because there are a lot of similarities with Australian pension funds here. They have different investment options that they more or less have to stay true to, so a lot of funds here can't get rid of a Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA). Getting rid of the SAA is a model implemented by sovereign wealth funds that embrace TPA, but you can't really do that in a pension plan. I think you had a similar situation where you still had to have an SAA. Can you tell me a little bit about your thinking around that, and how you went about implementing TPA with an SAA still in place? Steve Meier (04:56): Yeah, absolutely. As an American, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that America seems to think they come up with all the good ideas, but the Total Portfolio Approach—or total portfolio thinking—has been around for decades and has been widely and successfully adopted abroad. For the US, it's more along the lines of an evolution and an awareness that there's a better way to do things. As I said, part of it is artificial intelligence supporting more analytical rigour and quantitative tools. I think about framing decisions analytically versus using an inherited narrative. First principles thinking asks: what can we know that's objectively true about the portfolio? What can we state as a fact, and how can we use that as a building block for constructing and managing portfolios differently? Wouter Klijn (05:54): And in your experience, looking at implementing that in an SAA environment, are there any lessons learned or quick wins that you can share? Steve Meier (06:04): To answer your question more directly, I actually believe that a Strategic Asset Allocation can be, and is, compatible with the Total Portfolio Approach. There's a full spectrum and a bunch of different flavours of TPA that any institutional investor can implement. What's really interesting right now in the United States is the largest public pension plan, CalPERS—which is about a $640 billion plan. They've moved down a path where they are adopting, I believe at the beginning of July, a more full-blown, pure form of TPA. They have a very talented Chief Investment Officer named Steve Gilmore, who has been successful in implementing TPA at the New Zealand Sovereign Wealth Fund and, before that, the Australian Future Fund. There's also been a lot of work done behind the scenes by their Executive Director, Marcie Frost, to win the trust of the boards, secure a high degree of delegated authority, and ensure the right infrastructure is in place to bring in good talent and incentivise them to perform. A lot of eyes are on that, because not only is CalPERS the largest public pension plan in the US, but it also has a great history of being innovative. A lot of folks, myself included, are watching CalPERS implement that pure form of TPA, and to be honest, I'm rooting for them. I believe TPA is the best operating model for institutional investors today for many reasons. Because it's happening in a very visible way with the largest public pension fund in the States, many are watching to see if they're successful and if it can be replicated in different degrees by other US institutional investors. Wouter Klijn (08:12): That's an interesting example, because Stephen Gilmore has been in organisations that have all embraced TPA over the last couple of years. I think one element of the version of TPA he's bringing to CalPERS is that they are looking at a reference portfolio, and we just had a discussion about SAA. The reference portfolio is a big part of the New Zealand Super model. What is your thinking around that? Can you still do TPA without having a reference portfolio in place? That reference portfolio is sort of your base case; it illustrates what you should achieve if you had no skill or talent whatsoever, and challenges you to do better. That's a fundamental approach to investing, so what are your thoughts? Steve Meier (09:04): Wouter, my experience is that Strategic Asset Allocation tends to be more granular. For example, you look at your equity beta exposure, private equity, public equity, and your allocation to large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap in US developed markets, ex-US markets, and emerging markets. Conversely, a reference portfolio in a pure form of TPA might just be a 75/25 split: 75% exposure to equity and 25% to fixed income. From there, you look at underlying factors like duration, liquidity, and equity beta exposure, and you get very granular in how you view the portfolio. I believe that an SAA is a good starting point. It's something our trustees understand significantly, and it's something we're used to working on with our outside general consultants. It's easy to understand, but it does have deficiencies. The capital market assumptions that go into SAA decisions are typically backward-looking. If you look back 25 years, it takes you back to the dot-com bubble blow-up, the Global Financial Crisis, the European sovereign debt crisis, and the COVID situation. One thing we know with certainty is that the next 25 years are going to be very different than the last 25 years. We also know that SAA tends to be very static in a world that is very dynamic. So, I recognise there are pros and cons associated with SAA. It acts as an anchor and a starting point for decision-making, but hopefully not a constraint when it comes to smartly positioning the portfolio to take advantage of shifting risk and return dynamics. Wouter Klijn (11:13): So what do you see as the key benefits of TPA? You mentioned earlier that there are some really distinctive benefits. What are they? Steve Meier (11:22): Thinking holistically, I'll give you a couple of examples. When we started analysing New York City's portfolio at a very detailed and granular level, we discovered that out of our private real estate portfolio, we had a 12% exposure to real estate debt. Our infrastructure equity portfolio had a 5% exposure to debt. Take infrastructure, for example—one of my favourite asset classes. It's no longer just toll roads, airports, and utilities; it has evolved into data centres, fibre networks, cell towers, battery storage, and renewable power. That asset class has expanded to include elements of real estate and growth equity. It has long-duration assets similar to bonds and offers inflation protection dynamics. The factors and exposures infrastructure brings are very blurred now compared to what they used to be, and I think that will continue as the market evolves. This also recognises the convergence between private and public assets. We're seeing that to a great degree in the US, particularly in fixed income, where managing public and private mandates together makes a lot of sense. I travelled to California last week to meet with some wonderful clients, and two of those large institutions have actually integrated their public and private fixed income groups into one credit group. I think that's the right way to think about portfolios: evaluating duration, liquidity, and credit spread widening exposure irrespective of whether an asset is public or private. Irrespective of an asset's public or private status, it will respond to the same underlying economic drivers over time: growth, inflation, productivity, government spending, and private capital flows. Those are the real drivers of economic outcomes, and they'll impact your portfolio, perhaps with some delays. The value creation mechanism for PE and private assets tends to be longer, but there is a high correlation between what goes on in the real economy and across both public and private assets. I think the blurring and convergence of those markets strongly supports a TPA mindset. Wouter Klijn (14:27): With that difference between public and private assets, it's sometimes said that it's harder to implement TPA in a private market environment because it is more transaction-driven. For instance, if funds here have large airport holdings and a new one comes up, are you going to say no just because it doesn't fit the TPA philosophy? Probably not. Can you give a sense of how TPA integrates with the private market aspect? Steve Meier (14:56): The path we were going down in New York City—and the path that I think makes sense—is to implement portfolio tilts primarily in public assets. Philosophically, I don't believe private or alternative asset classes are areas you can quickly lean in and out of. You need to be more strategic because it takes longer for deals to get approved, and the value creation mechanism takes longer. There are practical aspects like finding managers, performing due diligence, getting board approval, and going through contracting. You need a five-year pacing plan for vintage diversification, or three years for private credit. You need to be very deliberate in those areas, but you can still think about private assets in a total portfolio construct. For example, with secondaries, we were just too big and couldn't turn around continuation vehicle approvals fast enough, so we often just allocated cash. However, upon analysing our private equity holdings, we discovered an underweight to middle-market private equity. We were able to use secondary exposures in those asset classes as completion assets within the overall PE allocation. You can be somewhat tactical while remaining long-term strategic, and adjust annual pacing pipelines to reflect changes. At New York City, we didn't have a lot of delegated authority. We had 68 trustees who were good fiduciaries but laypeople, making it harder for them to get behind dynamic asset movements and statistical risk analysis. Because of this, we hired external managers who had the capability to be more tactical. For example, nearly 50% of our private credit book was in separately managed multi-strat accounts with accordion features. With a one-time board approval, we enabled our managers to be tactical on our behalf and move in and out of asset classes based on risk-reward dynamics. In extreme sell-offs, relying on VIX volatility indicators or spread widening, they could quickly call capital and put money to work. With a $260 billion portfolio, it's hard to be tactical at scale. This isn't market timing or trading; it's tilting the portfolio where you believe you have a better risk-return outcome. Wouter Klijn (18:30): That's very interesting, because we're starting to see that more in Australia as well, where TPA plays out not so much within individual asset classes, but at a higher level with dynamic asset allocation. People take tilts or use completion portfolios to try to eke out a little bit of alpha on top of their allocation and be responsive to the environment. Do you see that as an integral part of total portfolio thinking, or has that always been around? Steve Meier (19:11): I definitely think it's an overlay. You have your SAA, and then you have a TPA approach in terms of tilting the portfolio. I've had the privilege of spending time in Australia, and now in my role at Neuberger, I see that your superannuation business model for retirement planning is far superior to anything we have in the States. As the US moved from defined benefit to defined contribution, many people haven't been vigilant in saving. Your compulsory system produces great outcomes and creates a tremendous pool of capital that influences global flows. Hats off to the Australians; you've set a great example. As baby boomers in the US reach retirement age—many unprepared financially—we are going to face real challenges that are much better handled by the Australian superannuation construct. Wouter Klijn (20:31): When you first came to NYC Retirement Systems, you tried to implement TPA by breaking down the asset class silos. What were some of the first things you did? There can be quite a different mindset between asset classes. Was it a matter of basing remuneration on the total outcome, or how did you effect cultural change? Steve Meier (21:05): From an incentive compensation standpoint, focusing on the total outcome is exactly how you do it, but we didn't have an incentive compensation pool at New York City, so that wasn't a lever I could use. Instead, I tried to win the hearts and minds of individuals by providing an educational backdrop and a sophisticated understanding of why we make collaborative decisions. Winning over teammates who had decades of experience in their siloed asset classes was challenging at first. But as we developed analytical rigour that provided insight into overlapping or cancelling active bets, they recognised things about our portfolio that we hadn't fully intended or appreciated. I give the team a lot of credit for coming around, but it was an almost four-year exercise to clean up our data, build out an analytical framework, implement quantitative tools, and train people on risk management statistics. Then, we had to turn those complex concepts into an understandable narrative for lay-trustee boards focused on their fiduciary responsibilities. Translating these complex ideas into a format people could easily understand was a constant work in process. Wouter Klijn (23:09): I think the other complication is that the pension plan consists of five individual plans. By analogy, we have TCorp here in New South Wales, which manages multiple plans using TPA, and they apply it over each portfolio. Is that how you went about it? Did you have five TPA models, or could you draw it at a higher level? Steve Meier (23:38): If we had gone all the way down that path, we probably would have ended up with degrees of variation across the five plans. In New York City, the Bureau of Asset Management (BAM) reports to the Comptroller, an elected official. Each of the five plans had its own general consultant responsible for their SAA, capital assumptions, and return expectations. We were prepared to be very respectful of those relationships, recognising that no single consultant will be entirely correct because the future will be vastly different than the past 25 years. Because they were different, I suspect we would have had an 80% commonality with perhaps 20% variation at the margin. That also speaks to the fact that one of the five plans had a funded ratio over 100%, three were in the low 90s, and the Fire Department pension plan was in the mid-80s. A lot of the Fire Department's funding ratio challenges stemmed from 9/11, where we lost 346 firefighters in one day, and many more subsequently from related illnesses. That plan had long-lived liabilities turn into shorter liabilities, heavily impacting its funding ratio—at its worst, dropping to around 47% or 49%. It has bounced back to about 85% or 86% now due to increased city contributions and a more aggressive investment policy that bore fruit. Wouter Klijn (26:16): You have to have a bit of both: more contributions, but probably also a more aggressive investment target. Does that just mean more equities and private equity? Steve Meier (26:30): Yeah, a little bit more private assets. The one fund that is funded at 102% actually de-risked by taking some chips off the table, reducing exposure to alternative or illiquid assets, and pulling back slightly on non-US assets as a dollar-based investor. That was only for the one fund, which happened to be the smallest of the five, but they are all highly consequential and we care greatly about the outcomes for all the beneficiaries. Wouter Klijn (27:01): It's always the smallest fund that does the best, isn't it? I want to talk about the role of technology within TPA. There's emphasis on knowing what tilts you have at the total portfolio level, but your paper also references the importance of deep analytical skills. Can you explain why that is, and what you expect to see regarding artificial intelligence providing deeper analysis? Steve Meier (27:45): At the heart of TPA, you must be factor-aware and risk-aware, tilting your portfolio where you get the best return for the risks you're taking. Instead of asking "what asset classes do I own," you ask "what risks do I own?" This requires an in-depth analytical framework. For example, many worry about private equity's exposure to software companies given concerns about AI. You need to look top-down and aggregate your total software and AI exposure, regardless of whether it's public or private. Embracing TPA requires market professionals to be more quantitative. In 1983, I actually took a 50% pay cut as a computer engineer to go through a Wall Street training programme. I've always been curious about analytics, being a Certified Financial Risk Manager and a CFA. When I got to New York, my Chief Risk Officer, Ed Berman, built fantastic analytics off the MSCI Barra One system using Python applications we developed. We repurposed positions to hire data analysts with hedge fund and python programming backgrounds to deeply analyse risk. We also heavily focused on supporting and servicing the trustees. We put together a "BAM University"—a two-day annual event to educate trustees on how we made decisions. I also hosted a Friday morning Thought Leadership Speaker Series over Zoom, where I interviewed major CEOs, CIOs, former US Treasury Secretaries, and Fed officials. This mechanism showcased my team's talent through smart questioning, but the huge benefit was educating the trustees. Once they interacted with senior leadership and understood the value creation mechanisms, it was much easier for them to approve deals. Rather than taking an arrogant view of knowing better than the lay-trustees, we collaborated and used our resources to help them make better decisions. Wouter Klijn (33:55): That dynamic between the investment team and the board is interesting. I recall someone who implemented TPA looking at a well-structured bottom-up portfolio and realising it was incredibly hard to explain to a board because it wasn't designed from the top down. It's an interesting problem when you yourself wonder why certain tilts exist as the result of siloed teams doing their own thing. Steve Meier (34:43): Those are unintentional bets. For example, we made the cardinal error of diversifying active managers with other active managers. Individually, they performed strongly relative to benchmarks, but in a portfolio construct, their bets cancelled each other out. We realised you need to be deliberate and partner with the right managers in concentrated positions to avoid cancelling out bets. As we developed our analytical framework, we learned things that might not have been great for outcomes previously, but it wasn't about apportioning blame. It was about understanding what we can prove about the portfolio now and adjusting our holdings to have better outcomes. Wouter Klijn (35:57): How does implementing shorter-term tactical tilts interact with longer-term investment objectives, especially when short-term and long-term goals can sometimes oppose each other? Steve Meier (36:24): Strategic asset allocation assumes markets are efficient, and we know they're not. Markets become euphoric or overly pessimistic, creating opportunities. You want to have the benefits of being a long-term investor while being slightly tactical at the margin to seize opportunities. We're not talking about trading or market timing; we're talking about an elegant framework that tilts the portfolio where you are compensated more generously for risk. It's hard to do, but you can implement it through dynamic asset allocation, overlays, or by hiring flexible external managers to execute mandates meaningfully when opportunities present themselves. Wouter Klijn (38:01): In your paper, you mentioned a rotation programme where investment specialists would sit in other asset class teams. Equity and fixed income people have very different mindsets—how did that work? Steve Meier (38:21): Absolutely. As a former fixed income person, you tend to be more sceptical, while equity folks are more optimistic about growth. The pilot rotational programme applied to junior folks to give them an opportunity to stretch and grow. Working for the city provides great experience but the pay isn't great, so providing a voice, training, and growth opportunities was our value proposition to incentivise talent. We actually moved a senior investment officer from public equity into private equity; he brought a different perspective that became infectious. In my 43 years of experience—including acting as CIO at State Street Global Advisors for 18 years and interim CIO for Connecticut—I thought I had all the answers. But meeting with 200 institutional clients over the last six months at Neuberger has shown me that everyone has something new to teach you. To foster this at BAM, we opened up investment committee meetings so junior staff could learn from the discussions and understand how every new investment impacted the overall portfolio. While we met some initial resistance from industry veterans, a quantitative, data-backed approach usually brought people around. Wouter Klijn (41:44): You finished your paper by saying that despite the changes at New York, it remained a work in progress. What challenges regarding liquidity management, remuneration, or data integration were still outstanding? Steve Meier (42:09): Everything. As senior investment professionals, our job is to move the ball forward and leave the portfolio, the team, and the trustees in a better place. I used to tell the trustees about Irene Triplet from a 2020 Wall Street Journal article. She was the last surviving beneficiary of a Civil War pension plan; her 83-year-old veteran father had her in 1930. Even 155 years after the Civil War ended, the plan was still paying out a monthly benefit to his disabled child. It's an incredible reminder that these are long-term, generational liabilities and promises. With that long-term mindset, everything can always be better. We were still building the analytical framework, educating trustees, and integrating teams. It is always a work in process, but we made great strides toward a TPA mindset, and now it's up to the next CIOs to advance the ball. Wouter Klijn (44:36): In your current role speaking to institutional investors, can you give an example of something you've recently picked up from the TPA discussion that stood out? Steve Meier (44:51): Spending time with Steve Gilmore and Marcie Frost at CalPERS has been exciting. I'm rooting for them because I truly believe risk awareness and factor tilting is the best operating model. I also believe artificial intelligence is accelerating our access to a richer data set for decision-making. It requires us to be fluent in quantitative analysis and risk management. Even at 65 years old, I believe I will see much more convergence between public and private assets in my lifetime, heavily supported by TPA and better analytics. Wouter Klijn (46:32): If AI provides deeper analysis and access to large data sets, will differences in organisational objectives become the primary factor in how people invest, rather than access to information? Steve Meier (47:00): I think so. Information moves incredibly fast now. AI accelerates our access to data and allows us to build powerful tools like Python scripts off of risk management systems. We're in a transformational period in financial history. For example, alternative assets were rare in the 80s and 90s, but now they often dominate portfolio positioning conversations. Wouter Klijn (48:12): And adjusting to these changing markets is aided by total portfolio thinking, especially since post-COVID assets don't fall neatly into traditional buckets anymore, correct? Steve Meier (48:37): Yes, it's the blurring of asset classes. Infrastructure now looks like real estate, long-duration bonds, inflation hedges, and growth equity. Private credit often has equity kickers. As assets blur together, it requires discipline around factor exposure. Utilising technology and sophisticated analytics enables more deliberate portfolio positioning that drives long-term performance. You still need scale to resource all this technology and analytics, but it's essential. Wouter Klijn (49:54): Yeah, you need some scale to have the resources to implement all this technology and analytics. Well, Steve, thank you very much for your time. That was a fascinating discussion, much appreciated. Steve Meier (50:09): Thank you very much, Wouter. I really enjoyed the conversation. I'm incredibly excited about where the industry is going. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to do it again down the road. Wouter Klijn (50:31): For sure. Thank you very much. NYC Retirement Systems (NYCRS) is a current client of Neuberger. Any reference to NYCRS is not an endorsement by them of Neuberger or any of Neuberger's advisory or other services. NYCRS has not approved or disapproved of the @i3 Investment Innovation Institute podcast. 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