Aviva Investors launches infrastructure income fund
Aviva Investors has launched a new infrastructure income strategy in the UK, adding to its real assets platform with a dedicated vehicle for long‑duration, inflation‑linked cashflows. The Aviva Investors Infrastructure Income Fund was announced and closed on 1 July 2020, marking a same‑day close for the UK‑domiciled vehicle. The LCIV Inflation Plus Fund officially launched on 11 June, providing an early institutional client for Aviva Investors’ real assets capabilities in the same year as the infrastructure income fund announcement. While detailed strategy parameters for the infrastructure income fund are not disclosed in the available information, it sits within Aviva Investors’ real assets platform overseen by Mark Versey as CIO, Real Assets.
In parallel, the LCIV Inflation Plus Fund is designed to deliver consistent, stable, inflation‑linked returns by investing in a diverse portfolio of income‑generating real assets. According to London CIV, the fund primarily targets real estate long income, including long‑lease and ground rent investments, anchoring the portfolio in contractual cashflows with explicit or implicit inflation linkage.
The LCIV Inflation Plus Fund also has flexibility to invest across other asset classes such as infrastructure debt and real estate debt, broadening its toolkit for sourcing long‑dated, income‑focused exposures. This cross‑asset flexibility allows the strategy to combine property‑backed long income with debt‑based infrastructure and real estate exposures within a single return and risk framework.
Capital formation and client base
The LCIV Inflation Plus Fund was initially seeded with £107 million from the London Borough of Redbridge and the London Borough of Bexley, providing an immediate pool of capital at launch. This initial seeding establishes the fund as a pooled vehicle for UK local authority investors seeking inflation‑linked real asset income, with London CIV acting as the pooling platform. Kevin Corrigan, interim CIO at London CIV, is the senior investment lead for the pooling vehicle, overseeing manager relationships including the mandate awarded to Aviva Investors. The contemporaneous announcement of the Aviva Investors Infrastructure Income Fund in the UK adds a dedicated infrastructure income product to this platform in the same year.
Real assets and inflation‑linked income positioning
The LCIV Inflation Plus Fund’s mandate to invest in income‑generating real assets places long‑lease real estate and ground rents at the core of its strategy. London CIV stated that the fund’s objective is to provide consistent and stable returns that are explicitly linked to inflation, using these long‑duration assets as the primary building blocks. This multi‑asset real income approach sits alongside Aviva Investors’ own infrastructure income fund, which is positioned within the same UK and European real assets market.
CLOSING: The next phase for Aviva Investors’ infrastructure and real assets platform will depend on further capital commitments into both the infrastructure income fund and the LCIV Inflation Plus strategy, with no additional timing milestones disclosed.
