Enplan has added Schroders to its defined benefit (DB) consolidation platform, introducing a new investment service for its clients.

The new approach is expected to boost Enplan’s investment, monitoring and digital reporting capabilities, by providing access to an investment proposition built bespoke for clients and normally only available to much larger schemes.

Enplan schemes are also set to benefit from Schroders’ liability-driven investment (LDI) modelling and access to a range of proven asset managers through an open architecture that aims to ensure best in class manager selection in each asset class.

Enplan trustee director and Entrust COO, Tom Neale, highlighted the addition of Schroders to Enplan as "another great example of how we are continually improving our offering and bringing the big scheme experience to smaller schemes”.

Adding to this, Isio head of Enplan, Andrew Goddard, noted that "recent pension reforms have shone a spotlight on the need for effective and efficient consolidation options for the DB marketplace, yet much of the current focus is on superfund options, also known as financial consolidators, which have high barriers to entry due to reduced reliance on sponsoring employers".

Given this, he suggested that operational consolidators, which provide economies of scale in an easily accessible way, "should be a larger part of this conversation".

Schroders Solutions head of UK client solutions, Ajeet Manjrekar, added: “Today’s announcement further demonstrates Schroders’ commitment to meeting the changing investment needs of UK DB pension funds – bringing our market leading investment expertise to pension funds of all sizes to power Enplan’s rapidly growing consolidation platform.”

The consolidation platform, which was established by Entrust and Isio in 2017, is designed to provide smaller DB pensions schemes with a one-stop-shop governance and operational solution.

Enplan has now onboarded more than 50 schemes and is responsible for close to £1.5bn of DB pension scheme assets.

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