Local Pensions Partnership reflects on reaching its third anniversary

In May, Local Pensions Partnership completed its third full year as a LGPS service provider, managing assets of around £17 billion and providing pension administration services to almost 600,000 members.

LPP was a pioneer of the pooling process, originally formed as a collaboration between Lancashire County Council and the London Pensions Fund Authority (LPFA) in 2016. The Royal County of Berkshire Pension Fund was added as an investment client in 2018.

Michael O’Higgins, Chair of Local Pensions Partnership, said: “Born out of the need to address serious inefficiencies among LGPS, LPP is built on five principles: leading investment management expertise; strong governance; administrative scale; consistent risk and liability management; and competitive and efficient pricing.

“The current global economic environment presents investors with many challenges, but as we reach our third anniversary, we are confident the foundations are in place to weather these challenges while bringing efficiency and value for money to schemes across the UK.

“We are also seeing that the LGPS pooling model is being considered in Scotland and in the private DB sector. As a pioneer in pooling, LPP’s expertise and experience provides us the opportunity to share best practice and further collaborate as opportunities arise.”

The pool considers its key achievements to include full investment management delegation from clients, managing 100% of client assets across all asset classes from day one and the launch of seven investment funds to deliver the benefits of pooled investment management.

Future priorities include the launch of a specialised real estate fund, along with other new, innovative and alternative investment opportunities, particularly in infrastructure and real estate.