MLC has awarded two new mandates totalling $430 million.  

The company appointed a new multi-asset manager, Pyrford International, to its Horizon Series portfolios and gave it a $200-million mandate.  

MLC also gave Capital International an additional $230 million for its emerging markets strategy.  

The new mandates were the result of changes to the MLC Horizon Series, the company said.  

MLC added two multi-asset managers to four of its Horizon Series portfolios in an effort to deliver more stable returns.  

It appointed Ruffer and Pyrford International, but the appointment of Ruffer was a reallocation from the MLC LTAR allocation and was not given any additional funds to manage.

Ruffer and Pyrford each manage $200 million, or 50 per cent of the multi-asset strategy.  

The changes affect the MLC Horizon Series 2 to 5.  

"These two new strategies make the portfolios less reliant on share markets for their performance," MLC Investment Management head of investment Susan Gosling said.  

"This is an exciting step in the evolution of our Horizon portfolios and we're currently looking at more strategies to further diversify these portfolios.  

"The multi-asset real return strategy gives managers the flexibility to invest across many types of assets without being constrained by a market benchmark.  

"As the strategies don't have common restrictions such as asset class limits, skilled managers can build portfolios which are well diversified and can cope with a range of risks.

"The emerging markets strategy, managed by Capital International, will give investors in the MLC Horizon Series of portfolios another way of accessing the rapid growth potential of emerging economies."     

To accommodate the new strategies, MLC has made small allocation changes to other asset classes, including a slightly reduced allocation to global shares.

There will also be a slight increase in fees of less than 0.02 per cent.  

At the beginning of this month, MLC terminated a global equities mandate of Capital International and awarded a $1.3-billion mandate to Delaware.  

Capital International has also been managing an emerging markets allocation in the MLC LTAR portfolio since 2005, and started managing an emerging markets mandate for the Horizon Series in July 2011.