Cytonn Investments trained pension trustees on real estate investments at the Windsor Sports Club. The pension trustees, representing pension schemes from all over the country were taken through the untapped investment opportunities that pension schemes can invest in to grow and stabilize their portfolios.
Maurice Oduor, taking participants through the training
Investment Manager Maurice Oduor, who took participants through the training, explained the different investment and real estate solutions offered by Cytonn. “Our investments arm brings in funding thus linking investors with real estate products developed by the Cytonn Investments affiliate Cytonn Real Estate. This guarantees our investors high returns,” he said.
Section of pension trustees who attended the training
Oduor further explained to the attendees how investment options at Cytonn are structured to offer guaranteed returns and an exit plan, a concern which the participants cited as reasons for not investing in real estate along with valuation, difficulty in acquiring land and fluctuation of returns.
Speaking during the training, Cytonn Chief Investment Officer and Head of Real Estate Elizabeth Nkukuu said that if pension schemes were to invest in real estate, the face of urban areas would change as they have close to a trillion shillings in assets.
Elizabeth Nkukuu responding to questions from
participants
According to most trustees, the knowledge gap in the pension sector has led to low investment in Alternative assets and only two schemes have exposure in Private Equity. Investment in Real estate remains low too at about 7% yet the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) cap stands at 30%. It is the duty of the investment professionals together with the trustees to work together in addressing this knowledge gap in alternative investments and also come up with products that are easy to understand and monitor performance. The main concerns that trustees have is the illiquid nature of Real estate but with better structuring this can be addressed and hence enable schemes benefit from the higher returning stable asset class.
The training is part of Cytonn’s initiative to enhance financial literacy of industry players that enables them make informed investment decisions.
