The infrastructure industry has made significant strides in developing industry benchmarks in the past decades. Market participants today have access to credible fund-level and asset-level benchmarks; better data coverage; and more sophisticated segmentation by sector, geography, vintage and risk profile. Yet frustrations over shortfalls persist.
“While transparency can be materially improved, the remaining challenge is comparability,” says Carolyn Hansard, managing director of energy, natural resources and infrastructure at the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) of Texas. “Different benchmarks measure different universes and use different methodologies, so there is still no single reference point that represents the full infrastructure market.”
Twenty years ago, institutional investors had no access to third-party benchmarks for unlisted infrastructure, whereas today several are available. “But none of them is what I would say is a golden standard,” adds Tani
