Some Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) funds ‘do not fully trust’ the LGPS pooling process and just do not want to pool, London Pension Fund Authority CEO, Robert Branagh, has said, highlighting this as a challenge to increasing the amount of LGPS assets into pools.

“There is still this challenge of do funds fully trust the pools… the elephant in the room is that some people just do not want to pool and that has got to change going forward,” Branagh stated at the recent PLSA Investment Conference 2024.

He noted that while there has been lots of progress with pooling, “there are still a number of LGPS funds who like making investment decisions”.

Therefore the 2025 date for LGPS asset pooling is “brilliant” he stated, for forcing the pooling of assets to speed up.

In the November 2023 Autumn Statement, Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, confirmed that there will be a 31 March 2025 deadline for the accelerated consolidation of all LGPS assets into pools.

He previously announced this intention in his July 2023 Mansion House reforms. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) also consulted the industry on this and other LGPS reforms from July-October last year.

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