Key Takeaways
- Geography: United States.
Analysis
California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), the public pension managing $382.4B in assets, has appointed Puneet Kohli as investment director for its Risk‑Mitigating Strategies (RMS) group. The move, disclosed at the plan’s November 12 board meeting, signals a renewed push to scale uncorrelated, downside-protective allocations inside the total fund.
The appointment was announced by Scott Chan, CalSTRS’ chief investment officer. Kohli will report to Geraldine Jimenez, senior investment director for public markets, and formally began the role on November 5. He succeeds Steven Tong, who retired earlier this year after more than four decades with the system.
Kohli arrives with more than 25 years of capital markets and investment platform experience. Most recently he served as a senior managing director at the large Canadian pension commonly known as OTPP (Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan), where he ran the external managers group. His CV also includes stints at Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), the Bank of Montreal and the National Bank of Canada, with roles spanning fixed-income, derivatives and equity derivatives trading and portfolio management.
At CalSTRS, Kohli’s remit will include allocating across RMS positions, collaborating with global managers on long-horizon mandates and incubating internally managed strategies alongside the Global Equity and Fixed Income teams. The RMS sleeve — created in the wake of the 2008 market shock — is designed to limit drawdowns and produce positive, low‑correlation returns for the broader portfolio.
The hire reflects two broader trends among large public pension plans: a desire to internalise more sophisticated strategies to save on external fees and tighter integration of risk-mitigation into a one‑fund or total‑portfolio approach. For CalSTRS, which has emphasised resilience and downside protection in recent policy updates, building in‑house capability could increase control over implementation and reduce reliance on external manager capacity during volatile markets.
That said, internalisation carries execution risks. Sourcing genuinely uncorrelated strategies at scale, maintaining governance and avoiding capacity constraints are practical challenges Kohli will inherit. The success of RMS will depend on marrying manager relationships with robust internal processes — a skillset Kohli developed running external-manager platforms at large Canadian public plans.