Cross industry working
A number of questions have recently been asked by members about AREF’s collaboration with other property organisations, so I thought that I would lay out the collaborations, formal and informal, in which we are involved.
UK
AREF is a member of the Property Industry Alliance (PIA), a collaboration between AREF, BCO, BPF, CREFCE, IPF, RICS and ULI and chaired by Bill Hughes of LGIM.
During the lockdown and the eviction moratorium we had daily calls between the CEOs to keep each other up-to-date. These calls continue but now happen weekly.
We are currently looking at rejuvenating the activities of the PIA post-pandemic, particularly with regard to:
- research collaboration,
- common action on the net-zero agenda,
- and promoting the ways that the industry collaborates with government and investors for the greater good across net-zero and levelling-up / regional regeneration.
We are also in almost constant collaboration with other PIA members on policy responses to the UK authorities, most frequently with the BPF and IPF.
Europe
AREF is a member of the European Real Estate Forum, an informal alliance of organisations with an interest in institutional investment in European real estate. The membership consists of twenty national and international organisations across Europe and is facilitated by Jeff Rupp at INREV.
EREF has quarterly meetings/calls with the main emphasis being on information exchange and work on common policy issues. AREF works particularly closely with INREV on EU and UK policy initiatives which have international implications.
Global
AREF is a member of the Alliance of International Fund Associations (AIFA), along with five other international property trade associations: REALPAC from Canada, the Property Funds Association from Australia, the Property Council of Australia, ASPIM from France and PREA from the USA.
Members meet quarterly to share information on market and policy trends affecting not only their own jurisdictions but also those with global implications, such as the various international sustainability reporting standards.
As well as participating in the formal groupings outlined above, AREF collaborates from time to time with looser groupings around individual issues. An example is the recent cross-industry “ESG Metrics for Real Estate” paper, aimed at responding to sustainability regulators such as the FCA, ISSB and TCFD where many of the issues are the same. This involved participation from AREF, BPF, CREFCE, INREV, IPF, Pensions for Purpose and The Good Economy, with leadership from Melville Rodrigues.
AREF is also a Special Member of the Investment Association, with whom we co-locate. We liaise regularly with their Policy, Strategy and Innovation team, sit on the Private Markets Committee and work with IA Engine, their tech incubator, with regard to proptech innovation.
If you have any questions or suggestions about how the wider industry can collaborate more effectively, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me or another member of the team.
Ian Cullen
It is with great sadness that I mark the passing of Ian Cullen on Saturday 18th February.
Ian was one of the founders of the Investment Property Databank in 1985, when it was a collaboration between a small number of the larger UK surveying firms. He remained with the organisation for over thirty years until his retirement in 2018, by which time it had become MSCI Real Assets.
IPD started as a UK direct property portfolio analysis service (legend has it as a box of index cards on the windowsill of a flat in Kentish Town) and by the time Ian retired it had grown to provide global coverage with internet delivery and had extended into fund level indices and climate risk analysis.
During that time Ian was responsible for overseeing the development of the technical aspects of real estate performance analysis and reporting at IPD, techniques which were innovative when they were first developed in the 1980s and which have formed the bedrock of property portfolio management, of the growth of the asset class and of many people's careers ever since.
He was also instrumental in creating the IPD conferences, with a visit to Brighton or Wiesbaden becoming an essential part of the real estate industry’s annual calendar, and he was frequently the public face of IPD at index launch events and quarterly briefings where he championed transparency with humour and charisma.
Aside from Ian’s immense technical and business contributions, the IPD Alumni LinkedIn group has been awash with stories of his kindness, his intellectual breadth and his constant preparedness to teach and mentor younger colleagues. IPD was an incubator for the careers of many of us, and a large part of that was the creative and collegiate atmosphere which Ian created around him.
Our industry and many individuals within it owe Ian a debt of gratitude. My condolences go to his family and friends.
Author
