What actually belongs in a trustee performance pack

Most packs fail in the first two minutes of a meeting because the opening page tries to be a textbook. Trustees have already sat through a safeguarding item and a property lease. They will give the investment paper a bounded slot. The pack should honour that slot.

We put three exhibits before any commentary. First, time-weighted return for the period and year-to-date, against the comparator named in the policy, with the income treatment written under the chart in six-point type. Second, the drawdown path over a look-back the board has already agreed — often five years, not the life of the fund if that life is decorative. Third, a concentration table: ten largest lines, weight, and whether any line is itself a fund of funds.

Commentary then has a job: to say which of those three exhibits moved for a reason the file can support. If sterling strength did the work, say so. If a single unlisted line was marked down by the administrator, say so and stop. A paragraph that explains ‘markets’ in the abstract belongs in a newspaper, not in a minute book.

Appendices are not a dumping ground. We keep a method note (how cash flows were treated, which price source was used for a suspended stock) and a transaction list only when a trustee has asked for it in a previous minute. Printing every trade by default trains nobody and hides the three numbers that matter.

If a board insists on a Sharpe ratio, we will calculate it, but we place it after the drawdown chart and we write the risk-free series we used. A ratio without that footnote is theatre. The same goes for tracking error on a three-month window: the figure is noisy, and we say so in the caption rather than hoping nobody notices.

The test we use in Toller Fratrum is simple. Could a trustee who missed the last two meetings reconstruct the period from page one to page three without a glossary? If not, the pack is still a dealer’s printout wearing a cover sheet.