Pooling of Investments
At the Summer Budget 2015 it was announced that the Government will work with Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) administering authorities to reform how LGPS investments are managed in England and Wales.
The 91 LGPS pension funds in England and Wales have commenced the exercise of pooling their assets into eight investment pools in an effort to drive down investment costs and enable funds to develop the capacity and capability to become leaders in infrastructure investment and help drive growth in the UK economy.
The expectation is that the new investment pools will begin to be used for collective investments from 1 April 2018 onwards.
The current position in Wales
Dyfed Pension Fund has been working in collaboration with the other 7 local government pension funds in Wales for several years on a number of issues and is progressing towards an investment pool for Wales.
A proposal on working together in Wales was submitted to Central Government and the response received was to continue developing the plan. A more detailed submission was made in July and a response is awaited. Work continues to design the governance and structure of the pool.