British Steel Pension Scheme appoints Legal & General Investment Management to manage its assets

14 July 2022

The Trustee of the British Steel Pension Scheme (“BSPS”) and Legal and General Investment Management (“LGIM”) are pleased to announce an agreement in principle that LGIM is to be appointed to manage the combined assets of the BSPS Defined Benefit (DB) scheme.

BSPS is one of the UK’s largest pension schemes, with around 69,175 members and £9.9bn in assets. BSPS is administered by B.S. Pension Fund Trustee Limited, a corporate Trustee Company set up for this purpose. Under this agreement, and at the same time, a number of employees of the scheme’s in-house investment manager will be transferring to LGIM to support the transition, which is expected to commence in the final quarter of 2022.

There is an estimated £1.6 trillion remaining in Defined Benefit scheme assets in the UK. The Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) has estimated that £770 billion could come into play in the UK buy-in and buyout market leading up to 2030. Legal & General recently celebrated its 35th year since the inception of its PRT business; it remains the only global PRT provider.

Keith Greenfield, Chairman and Independent Trustee director, BSPS: “We are very pleased to announce this agreement on behalf of our members. L&G are the leading provider of both investment and insurance solutions in the DB marketplace, and between them LGIM and LGRI* already manage and insure just under 40% of our assets. Leveraging the scale and expertise of LGIM will resolve a number of cost and operational risk issues and will support our strategy to secure liabilities in full with one or more insurers, and be in a position to make additional payments to members under the agreement reached when the Scheme was set up.
The Trustee would like to take this opportunity to thank colleagues in the Scheme’s in-house investment team past and present for their significant contribution to both the Old and New British Steel Pension Schemes over a period of many years. I hope that a number of our colleagues will continue their careers and involvement with the Scheme with LGIM in the future.”

Michelle Scrimgeour, Chief Executive, LGIM: “We are delighted to be supporting the trustees and members of BSPS on their route to secure liabilities. Like many DB schemes, BSPS has seen its funding level against the cost of securing liabilities with an insurer improve significantly in recent months. Our role will be to manage the investments whilst closely matching insurer pricing and, in so doing, we will be leveraging the full resources of the L&G Group.”

Source: LGIM