The 'old school' approach to setting a pension fund’s investment strategy has usually been to set a target return and then structure the assets to try to match the actual performance with the targeted performance. This approach didn’t fully recognise the importance of meeting the fund’s future pension obligations. The success of the investment strategy was only measured on whether the portfolio outperformed some market benchmark and not a liability benchmark based on the present value of the pension fund’s obligations or liabilities as they change through time.