Topic: Investments

Our ESG strategy prioritises a finance-first approach to investing

The consensus may be waning, but even today, some investors still agree with the Milton Friedman doctrine that a firm’s only responsibility is to legally increase its stakeholder profits, leaving individual investors, consumers, and employees – rather than corporations – as the leaders of positive societal change.

Previously, this approach was deemed to be logical. However, there are obvious problems with it. For example:

  • Firms that prioritise corporate responsibility may gain community support and, as a result, benefit their shareholders.
  • There is evidence that firms that subscribe to the Friedman doctrine place excessive focus on short-term profit delivery, which has a negative effect on longer-term thinking around investment and innovation.

A finance-first approach to ESG

However, be that as it may, we need to be mindful of not constraining investments too narrowly when integrating environmental, social and governance factors because this will begin to diminish prospective risk-adjusted returns. If social and economic considerations take precedence over a finance-first approach to investing, there is a heightened risk that future investment returns will be compromised. Therefore, it’s important for investment managers to take a sensible approach to ESG investing, one that aligns with a finance-first approach. For example, if a company is involved in polluting the environment, exploiting its workers, or incentivising its managers to focus on short-term profit delivery, then these issues are likely to reduce the sustainability of its business model and therefore its attractiveness as an investment.

Higher market valuations

ESG considerations should not be treated as an add-on to a pre-existing asset allocation approach but should be at the core of how members’ retirement savings are allocated. While it cannot be comprehensively proven, there is substantial academic evidence to support the view that companies with higher-than-average ESG ratings tend to be rewarded with higher market valuations compared to their competitors.

A fundamental reason for this seems to be that these companies are better at managing the non-financial risks of their business models, and, as a result, this makes them relatively more sustainable and less susceptible to a damaging de-rating by the market. We’ve all seen real-world examples of companies not managing non-financial risks and the negative effects on their share prices, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on BP or the emissions scandal on Volkswagen.

A ‘leader’ in managing ESG risks

At The People’s Pension, we have successfully incorporated ESG into the stewardship of our members’ retirement savings and, using MSCI ESG ratings, our default investment profile has been rated AA, making it a ‘leader’ in managing ESG risks. However, this is only part of what we’re focusing on as responsible investors.

An exclusionary approach

Instead of adopting the best in class, the ‘how’ approach to ESG investing, responsible investing involves making the active choice to remove (or choose) investments based upon the ‘what’. The ‘what’ typically involves removing or excluding investments in controversial weapons, addictive substances, gambling, and enterprises damaging to the environment. Therefore, in addition to ESG integration, we have used negative screens to help us divest £226m from 147 companies involved in controversial weapons or linked to controversies involving human rights, labour, the environment, and corruption.

Due to the increasing influence of responsible investment on investor choices, this approach should not sacrifice returns and can help prevent assets from becoming stranded by climate transition. Therefore, an exclusionary approach, in theory, can add to the improved risk-adjusted returns achieved through ESG integration. We have progressed even further with this approach by implementing tilts to reduce the carbon emissions from the assets we hold for our members.

Our goal is to be engaged asset owners, and we therefore expect our external managers to participate on behalf of our members in order to help ensure responsible governance and reduce non-financial risks. This activity should have a positive impact on our members’ returns over the long term. 

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This article was written when we were B&CE, before we changed our name to People’s Partnership in November 2022.

A review of pensions policy in 2021

Many of the policy changes discussed in 2021, like pensions dashboards, will be difficult to accomplish but will bring real improvements for savers. We have more questions about other initiatives, but have no doubt the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is trying to improve the UK pension system.  

Pensions dashboards

Big projects, like the pensions dashboards have seen major progress this year. The main contracts for the systems that will make the dashboards work have been issued by the Money and Pensions Service and they are progressing towards staging schemes on dashboards from early 2023.

Most of the legal and regulatory rules that will underpin how dashboards work have yet to be published, so there is still much to do. Similarly, we haven’t seen the application programming interface (API) that will be used to link together pension scheme member databases and the dashboards information architecture. It’s imperative that schemes get confirmation on the final requirements as soon as possible so that preparation can begin in earnest.

Small pots

In late 2020, the DWP working group produced a report recommending that the industry look at the policy and administrative issues around automatic consolidation of small pots. So, this year there has been further investigation into the small pots issue. And now following a report by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) and the Association of British Insurers (ABI) working group, there is a need for further action by policymakers. It is likely we will need legal and potential primary legislation to make small pot consolidation a reality. We hope that both the government and the industry will return to the table in 2022.

Communications and engagement

We now have final regulations for the simpler annual benefit statement.

The statement is now a known quantity. For most people, it’ll be a clear and standard-comparable document. For some (potentially those with more than one job or a protected pension age) it may look different, but not significantly so.

Investments

On investments, we have seen a renewed focus on investing in illiquid assets. Much of the government views rapidly growing DC funds as an easy source of capital for national economic priorities.

Measures like changing the charge cap are being suggested, which we see as ineffective. But other measures, like a new fund structure, are more likely to enable greater diversification in how DC funds invest. Broadly, we see investment in unlisted assets as potentially desirable given the large body of work showing an illiquidity premium for the schemes capable of capturing it.

The market for workplace DC is, however, very price-sensitive. Investing in unlisted assets is typically much more expensive than investing passively in listed equities and changing scheme asset allocations to invest in unlisted assets would most likely pass through to member charges.

Value for money

Which brings us to The Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority framework for value for money. Making the workplace pension conversation about value, rather than just charges, is a sensible aim. Initially, the regulators’ value-for-money framework is intended to help pension professionals assess value, but, in time, we expect metrics to be developed that are consumer facing.

Our view is evolving. The focus on the proposed framework consultation paper in judging the quality of scheme oversight, investment and costs and charges is mainly right. The Pensions Policy Institute’s recent piece on the global experience of value for money also highlighted the importance of governance as a theme. It’s something we hope both regulators will return to.

So, while we expect 2022 to be equally busy, the hope is that policymakers keep the bigger picture in mind. 

Tim Gosling, head of pensions policy at B&CE, provider of The People’s Pension

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This article was written when we were B&CE, before we changed our name to People’s Partnership in November 2022.

The People’s Pension divests £226m

The People’s Pension removes £226m from businesses that fail to meet its ESG standards

Leading workplace pension scheme, The People’s Pension1 has today announced that it has removed investment in companies worth up to £226m from its funds because these businesses have failed to meet its rigorous ESG (environmental, social and governance) standards2.

The workplace pension scheme has worked closely with its fund manager, State Street Global Advisors (SSGA)3, on the policy which led to the initial removal of approximately 150 stocks from its portfolio.

The divestment targets controversial weapons companies as well as organisations linked to severe controversies involving human rights, labour, environment, and corruption. Such companies are deemed to present some of the most severe types of ESG-related investment risk4.

Jon Cunliffe, managing director of investments at B&CE, provider of The People’s Pension, said:

“We’ve taken the significant step of divesting from companies which fail to meet our ESG standards because of the risks they pose to member accounts and the reputation of the scheme.

“As engagement with companies which flagrantly breach good practice is unlikely to work, we have removed investments from these holdings, in the best interest of our members.

“Both SSGA and our Trustees have worked very hard to get to this point, and we know that this decisive action will have the support of our members as our polling tells us that responsible investment is important to them.

“These exclusions underline our commitment to being a responsible investor, which we put at the heart of our decision making2.”

Alistair Byrne, managing director, head of retirement strategy at State Street Global Advisors, said:

“ESG considerations are an increasingly crucial aspect of the investment strategy of any pension scheme. We are delighted to have been able to work with The People’s Pension to design and implement these changes, creating a more robust and sustainable default fund for their millions of members. We look forward to continuing our collaboration to evolve the ESG strategy of the scheme.”

ENDS

Holding long-term investments – why has my pension pot changed in value

Pensions, like any investment, carry some degree of risk. The value of your pension can go down as well as up. When considering these swings in value it’s important to think about your pension as a long-term investment.

Over the long term these swings in value usually iron out and return a profit.

History teaches

During the 2008-2009 stock market crash the FTSE 100 (the share index of the top 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange) struck its lowest point in March 2009. Yet it came roaring back during the following decade and struck all-time highs in May 2018.

But you don’t need to buy during a crash to benefit from stock market growth. Going back to the mid-1980s, if you’d invested a pound in the UK stock market on any given day and kept it there for 10 years, 99% of the time you’d have made money – on average more than doubling it. If you’d invested for only 1 year and taken your money out, you’d have lost money over a quarter of those times.

So, if you plan on remaining invested for a long time, don’t worry too much about the short-term ups and downs of the market. The main point is to stay invested over the long term, so your contributions have chance to grow.

If you still have concerns about your pension it may be beneficial to speak with a financial adviser. They usually charge a fee for their service so bear this in mind before seeking advice. Another option is to visit a website like MoneyHelper that provides free advice.

What are the benefits of a workplace pension?

Your workplace pension is a great way to save for your retirement:

  • All the contributions you and your employer make into your pension are tax-free
  • Pension funds invest in lots of different assets and this helps spread risk while still targeting long-term growth. For more information about what your fund(s) invest in please see our fund factsheets
  • The full state pension is only £179.60 per week (for the 2021/2022 tax year) so if you think you’ll need more money in retirement a workplace pension is a great investment
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This article was written when we were B&CE, before we changed our name to People’s Partnership in November 2022.

How do you define responsible investment?

Responsible investment is a phrase that has been thrust into the limelight in the last 12 months as more pension savers rightly become interested in how their money is invested.

But what does responsible investment actually mean?

At The People’s Pension, we have the dual responsibility of keeping savers’ money safe whilst generating positive returns – which of course must be further balanced against their own attitude to risk.

Our challenge is to determine how we invest member money in the types of industries and companies that they’re comfortable with, and still provide the type of growth needed to provide a meaningful return on their investment.

To be clear on the concerns our members have, we ask them. Over the last couple of years, we’ve run a survey asking them to rate the issues that matter most to them. Overwhelmingly, climate change came out as the most important topic, followed by controversial weapons.

So, if you know your customers’ primary concerns, how do you turn that sentiment into actionable change? Well, this question requires serious and careful consideration. For us, this means taking time to assess all issues thoroughly and taking a systematic and fact-based approach so we can make high-quality decisions on behalf of our customers.

This approach has seen us implement our first steps in ensuring our investment portfolio is aligned with our members’ wishes – we’ve completely excluded controversial weapons from our investment portfolio. This was a relatively straightforward decision to make and change to implement, as it had no material impact on the make-up and performance of our investment funds – so low risk and fuss free.

However, addressing climate change and how to travel down the road to net zero, requires rather more planning as it’s a very much more considered journey. We started in 2018, by adding a fund that reduces the carbon intensity of that part of our default funds. We acknowledge there is more to come, and from the mid-2020s we intend to use new contributions to smooth our transition to a net zero portfolio. This aims to balance the future risks of stranded assets against the current concentration risks caused by a relatively small number of net zero companies, as well as avoiding the potentially large transaction costs of having to sell significant assets in short time frames.

But there’s more to come. I’ll be at the Pensions Age Autumn Conference if you’re interested to hear more about our investment strategy and the further steps The People’s Pension plan to take on the route to net zero – look forward to seeing you there.

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This article was written when we were B&CE, before we changed our name to People’s Partnership in November 2022.

B&CE appoints new Investment Managing Director

Provider of The People’s Pension announces appointment

B&CE, provider of The People’s Pension1, has appointed a new Investment Managing Director to bolster its Investment Business Unit and enable the continued growth in scale and breadth of B&CE’s funds under management.

Jon Cunliffe, who has over 30 years’ experience in the finance industry will join B&CE in October. He joins from his role as Chief Investment Officer at wealth managers, Charles Stanley, with previous roles at Tesco Pension Investment, Aberdeen Asset Management and Bank of England.

Commenting on his appointment, he said:

“B&CE has an unrivalled reputation for providing first class workplace pensions solutions, which have provided good risk adjusted returns at a really competitive price.  Elsewhere, the support and customer service that clients receive are a cornerstone of its impressive growth trajectory. 

“After more than 30 years working in financial services, the opportunity to work for a fast growing, not for profit organisation, where there is a clear alignment of the interests of all stakeholders, is too good an opportunity to turn down.  I can’t wait to begin working with the team to establish B&CE’s position as the leading provider of workplace pensions.”

The People’s Pension, administered by B&CE, is the largest, independent master trust in the UK.

The new Managing Director for Investments will be responsible for the overall performance of the Investment Business Unit, working alongside the Chief Investment Officer who will retain responsibility for client investment strategy.

Welcoming the new hire, B&CE CEO Patrick Heath-Lay, said:

“It’s fantastic that Jon will be joining us. The growth of our investment activities, on behalf of our members, will be significant over the coming years and with the addition of Jon’s wealth of experience, these activities will continue to go from strength to strength.”

ENDS

A podcast on charges, defaults & responsible investment

10 million – that’s the success of auto-enrolment in numbers. 10 million people saving billions into a pension. But the job of pension providers and the government is far from being complete.

In this podcast with Hymans Robertson, I discuss what the DWP’s consultation on charges could bring for pension savers and give an insight into the latest activity from The People’s Pension in our members’ best interests.

Podcast highlights

  • Not-for-profit – what it means to be a master trust provided by B&CE, an organisation that’s for people and not profit.
  • Benefit of our new charging structure – the more our members save the lower their charge could be.
  • Our take on DWP’s consultation on charges – a potential solution to millions of cross-subsidised dormant pensions.
  • The importance of the default fund – our report, ‘Workplace defaults: Better member outcomes’ with State Street Global Advisors, depicts the behavioural biases and the common investment mistakes made by savers.
  • Our approach to responsible investment – the steps we’ve taken to ensure our investment funds reflect environmental, social and governance factors.
  • Support for our members and employers – how we do things differently to other providers.

Listen to the podcast

Hear from me and host, Victoria Panormo, Senior DC Investment Consultant from Hymans Robertson in the podcast now:

Podcast: Hymans Robertson on… DC Master Trusts – The People’s Pension

Other reading

For more about our report, ‘Workplace defaults: Better member outcomes’ with State Street Global Advisors and our findings read my blog post:

Why default funds are the simple and sensible choice for most

Glenn Dobson is a former National Development Team Manager at B&CE, provider of The People’s Pension. He has been replaced by Phil Taylor.

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This article was written when we were B&CE, before we changed our name to People’s Partnership in November 2022.

Default funds – the simple & sensible choice for most

What do you think when you hear ‘default fund’? Look it up in the dictionary and it says ‘default’ means something that exists or happens if you don’t change it intentionally by performing an action.

It’s a shame something so positive has this label. Default funds are, in my opinion, the next success story after auto-enrolment – a well-governed default is the simplest path to achieving good returns. People lead busy lives, get overwhelmed by too much choice and complexity, and if left to their own devices may make poor decisions. The beauty of the well-governed default is that it’s simple for members. They don’t need to actively do anything to benefit from the default but, behind the scenes, there’s a huge amount of dedicated activity by experts in the complex world of investments.

And with 99.7% of savers in master trusts remaining in the default (according to the Pensions Policy Institute), it’s a part of the system I believe we should be celebrating as an industry.

Risks for DIY investors

A recent report by The People’s Pension and State Street Global Advisors highlights the risks for most people of taking investment matters into their own hands rather than staying in the default. ‘Workplace Defaults: Better Member Outcomes’ models potential outcomes from the most common mistakes DIY investors make with their pension savings and compares them with a typical default fund. Over 40 years the default investor amasses a pot of nearly £430,000. The DIY investors risk missing out on as much as £247,000 by switching out of the default.

  • Mistake 1 is chasing past performance – ‘Performance chasing Patricia’ buys high into a strong performing fund expecting it to continue to do well but sells when it falls, and she loses faith.
  • Mistake 2 is putting all your eggs in one basket – ‘Eggs in one basket Elliot’ fails to diversify his portfolio and invests in only UK funds.
  • Mistake 3 is not taking enough risk – ‘Cautious Connor’ doesn’t like taking risk so invests in a cash fund.
  • And finally mistake 4 is forgetting to take account of changing circumstances – ‘Forgetful Fiona’ is initially an active investor but as time goes by, she forgets to review her investments.

Default is not a last resort

I’ve spent my working life trying to demystify pensions, and I know that savers and employers alike crave things to be as simple as possible. It’s true there may still be a lot of complicated technical detail within the inner workings of pension schemes, investment funds and regulatory input. But that’s the point with a default fund. Dedicated experts whose job day in day out is to be specialists in this stuff take the necessary action to ensure a scheme is well run and investments are managed with great scrutiny, so that members don’t have to. A default isn’t a last resort. In well-governed master trusts, they represent a solution which is in the best interests of the vast majority – a lot of thought goes into it so that members who don’t have the time or the specialist knowledge can get better outcomes.

Add to that the tight regulation and governance assigned to master trust defaults, in particular, and it’s clear they are far more than just a back-up position for those who don’t engage with investment decisions.

We should celebrate a system which offers better outcomes for most members in a simple way without them having to make any difficult decisions. In a world where we’re so often faced with an overwhelming array of choices, it’s hugely reassuring.

Read more

Read the report, Workplace Defaults: Better Member Outcomes.

Glenn Dobson is a former National Development Team Manager at B&CE, provider of The People’s Pension. He has been replaced by Phil Taylor.

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This article was written when we were B&CE, before we changed our name to People’s Partnership in November 2022.

DIY savers could miss out on £247,000 by switching

Switching from pension default fund could cost ‘DIY’ investors up to £247,000

DIY investors risk missing out on up to £247,000 by switching from their workplace pension scheme’s default investment strategy and making their own fund choices instead, according to new research from The People’s Pension1 and State Street Global Advisors2.

Largely due to the success of auto-enrolment and its more than 10 million new savers, billions of pounds are saved into individual UK workplace pension pots each year. The vast majority are invested into well-managed and cost-effective default funds and exposed to a wide range of investment types and markets in order to manage the risk for savers.

The new report, Workplace Defaults: Better Member Outcomes3, has revealed the potential cost of four of the most common mistakes made by pension savers who choose to be their own investment manager rather than investing in a default fund.

It shows how different savers, who display particular behavioural biases, perform over 33 years, compared to someone who stays invested in a well-run default fund throughout and amasses a pot of nearly £430,0003:

  • Cautious Connor – Doesn’t like taking risks so invests in a cash fund – could miss out on nearly £247,000.
  • Performance Chasing Patricia – Buys high into a strongly performing fund expecting it to continue to do well, but sells out again when it subsequently falls and she loses faith – could miss out on just over £173,000.
  • Eggs in One Basket Elliot – fails to diversify his portfolio, for example, investing only in UK shares – could miss out on just under £31,000.
  • Forgetful Fiona – Is initially an active investor but fails to keep her portfolio under review and circumstances change. This means she doesn’t ‘lifecycle’ switch to lower risk funds when approaching retirement – could miss out on nearly £31,000.

The report also focuses on the lack of knowledge around charges paid on pension accounts, with almost eight in 10 (78 per cent) savers unaware that a fee is taken from their pot.4 The research shows that, on average, ‘retail’ pensions carry a charge of one per cent, compared with a workplace average of 0.5 per cent.

Nico Aspinall, Chief Investment Officer at The People’s Pension, said:

“Most people enrolled into a workplace pension stay invested in a default fund which, as this study confirms, is by far the simplest path to take to achieving good returns. There will undoubtedly be some who will want to take investment decisions and try to quickly make up the losses from this year’s fall in markets but this research shows that DIY investment is fraught with dangers.

“Members in the default fund typically face lower charges and every investment decision is made with their best interests at heart to help improve their retirement outcomes.”

Alistair Byrne, head of pensions and retirement strategy at State Street Global Advisors, further noted: “Investment decisions are complex and most busy pension savers can’t give them the time and attention they deserve. Investing in the default strategy means putting your future finances into well-governed and efficiently scaled products managed by experienced professionals.”

ENDS

Factor funds for master trusts

When the $1 trillion Norwegian government sovereign fund lost almost a quarter of its value in the financial crisis of 2008-09, it turned not to passive managers but to factor investing.

The fund’s absolute performance in the decade since the crisis has been better when compared with the preceding decade. This moment was a real watershed for the investment industry – so it’s worth looking at the detail.

Stung by the losses, and a national parliament anxious for answers, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance commissioned academics to analyse the fund’s active returns – that’s actual returns minus the benchmark – to see what their internal and 200-odd external active fund managers were doing for them.

They found that active fund managers added less than 1% of overall returns, with the benchmark doing the rest. But they also found that this modest contribution could be mostly explained by a small number of systematic factors, not least value, liquidity and low volatility. These weren’t deliberate choices by the client – but were by-products of the way the fund managers worked.

The academics recommended that the Ministry of Finance (which set the benchmark) should actively decide the level of factor exposure and that these exposures should be included in the benchmark.

And that’s factor investing in a nutshell.

It’s based on decades of academic research which says a number of investment factors can offer higher returns and better diversification than the traditional indices used for fund benchmarks. And this mode of investing usually comes at a lower fee level than active management.

Today, it’s widely accepted that there are 5 factors:

  • Value – where the price of an investment is cheap compared to its fundamentals.
  • Momentum – the tendency of securities to continue to perform as they have previously, whether good or bad.
  • Quality – which means ‘better’ companies (measured by profitability and other metrics) outperform lower quality companies.
  • Low volatility – some shares or bonds respond to market shocks more modestly than others, and therefore offer high returns over the long run.
  • Size – smaller companies tend to outperform larger ones, not least because they are under researched and, in many cases, overlooked by the very large institutional investors.

As you might expect, we’re fans of factor investment and made our first investment last year – into a fund also intended to achieve our goal of significant reductions in our exposure to fossil fuels.

Why factor investing appeals to us

One reason is their provenance. Unlike many new ideas, which originate from fund management companies and turn out to be fads, this comes from the client side and has a vast body of academic literature behind it.

Another is the enhancement to the risk/ return profile. We added factor investments to our default strategy and, while one year is far too short a time to assess their usefulness, we would expect them to play a notable role in achieving our target of beating inflation over the coming decades.

We also like the low fees. At The People’s Pension, we aim to keep member charges as low as possible. Factor funds can offer better returns than passive investments, without the sometimes excessive fees for actively managed funds.

The other reason is time. We have a very long investment time horizon whereas markets have an increasingly short one. This means market movements are dominated by short-term factors and noise, not long-term information. Factors funds appear to have a better long-term risk and return payoff to us, so offer us a more effective way of delivering for members over the decades.

Time will tell if we’re right – but we’re greatly encouraged by a decade of Norwegian experience and, more importantly, decades of academic research.

Read more

Find out more about how investments work with The People’s Pension on our investment webpages.

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This article was written when we were B&CE, before we changed our name to People’s Partnership in November 2022.