This paper argues that there is no reason for investors in unlisted infrastructure to continue using absolute return or ‘cash +’ benchmarks. It calls for investors to abandon them and adopt market-relative benchmarks based on fair value and representative data.

This change from an absolute reference to a relative one would provide a better appreciation of the risks and performance of infrastructure investments and as such would allow taking more informed investment decisions.

We note that in a recent global survey, most of the industry supported this view. In practice however, many of them still use an absolute benchmark that fails to represent the risks of their infrastructure investments.