nominal rates of return to provide a sense of the ongoing medium-term investment performance, even while GIC maintains its sights on the long term. It included two composite portfolios and volatility statistics to reflect the level of portfolio risk and to offer perspective in reading the 5-year and 10-year figures. For the year ended 31 March 2017, its annualised 20-year real rate of return was 3.7%. In USD nominal terms, GIC achieved an annualised return of 5.1%, 4.3% and 5.7% for the 5-year, 10-year and 20-year time periods respectively. In August 2021, their estimates also put the total figure of AUM at US$744 billion – or just over S$1 trillion, for the first time in GIC’s history after a 37.5 per cents in return. Governance and risk management The funds managed by GIC are owned by the Singapore Government. Its investment returns supplement the country's annual budget in areas such as education, R&D, health care and physical environment. As a Fifth Schedule company under the Singapore Constitution, GIC is accountable in various key areas to the President of Singapore who is empowered under the constitution to obtain information to enable her to safeguard the country's reserves. The Auditor-General, who is appointed by the President of Singapore, submits an annual report to the President and Parliament on his audit of the Government and other bodies managing public funds. GIC manages risk by investing in a well-diversified portfolio, with a balanced distribution of asset classes and their underlying business sectors and geographies. This, too, is why GIC's performance has to be measured on the basis of its overall portfolio rather than by how much it makes or loses on individual investments. Its approach to "risk management" has three distinct components: portfolio risk; process risk and people risk. As a board member of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, the successor of the International Working Group of SWFs that developed the Santiago Principles in October 2008, GIC publishes how it adopts and implements the voluntary set of principles and practices. New investment framework GIC implemented a new investment framework in 2013 to give it more flexibility to focus on "investments that may be riskier in the short term but would generate returns in the long-term." The new framework defines more clearly GIC's risk and return drivers, its long-term investment objectives and the responsibilities of the GIC board and management. Firstly, a 'Reference