As the events in Ukraine have unfolded over the last week, it’s understandable that our members are concerned about any Russian investments that NGS might hold.

As of 4 March 2022, we have excluded future investments in Russia until further notice.

We would like to be transparent about our position as at 28 February 2022. At that date, we had approximately $3.5 million* of exposure to Russian equities, which has been trimmed since 31 January 2022. Current sanctions mean we can’t take any further action at the moment, but we will continue to look for opportunities to sell down these assets. We are underweight relative to the MSCI World ACWI benchmark, which means we hold less than the average passive investor.

We also had approximately $2.5 million* of exposure to Russian bonds. Once again, this has dropped since 31 January 2022 because of active trimming in the last week. We plan to fully exit these bonds when liquidity becomes available.

We are not looking to exit our $1.8 million* of exposure to Ukrainian bonds.

As a percentage of the assets of the Diversified Option, Russian equities and bonds represent approximately 0.05% of all assets.

While current trading sanctions make this difficult at the moment, we will continue to work with our investments managers to sell down our remaining Russian equities and bonds.