Annual Report shows Brunel exceeding pooling ambitions again

Brunel Pension Partnership is making cost savings of £34 million per year, two years ahead of its initial target of 27.8m a year by 2025.

The partnership’s Annual Report & Financial Statements shows that Brunel is therefore saving almost four times the costs it incurs thanks to the management fees it negotiates.

This success reflects two defining characteristics of Brunel: the professionalism and efficiency of our approach to pooling; and the negotiating power we gain from our leadership in Responsible Investment.

While the specific targets on cost savings were set by Brunel Pension Partnership, the broader ambitions of pooling were defined by the UK government when it launched the pooling process: to make cost savings while enhancing performance; and to enhance investment in UK infrastructure.

Infrastructure investment

Infrastructure is a core part of Brunel’s focus. The partnership is in its third cycle of private market portfolios. Through these portfolios, it has targeted a range of infrastructure projects and, at financial year-end (30 September 2022), infrastructure portfolios had £819 million invested and had delivered £6 million in cost savings.

The government provided two priorities for the new LGPS pools but we added one of our own: to provide industry leadership on Responsible Investment (RI).

On this front, the reporting year saw Brunel launch the Cornwall Local Impact portfolio, the first LGPS multi-asset portfolio to target local impact. Despite its small size, Brunel was able to negotiate mandates with two leading global managers – one for affordable housing, the other for renewables – and to harness the portfolio to target those priorities in a county where both poverty and climate change are significant challenges.

Climate Stocktake

The portfolio is one particular highlight from a fruitful year, a year in which we launched our Climate Stocktake. That process that has since been completed, enabling us to publish our new Climate Change Policy 2023-30. The challenges are urgent and we know that our progress must continue to be rapid.

As Laura Chappell, our CEO, puts it in her introduction to the report: “The twin challenges of transition finance and accelerating global change are enormous. By delivering on the goals set by our partnership, we will not just benefit our clients and their members. In the long-term, we will demonstrate to the wider industry to our belief that RI is indispensable to achieving healthy long-term returns.”

We hope you enjoy reading about Brunel’s financial year and the rapid progress we have made as a partnership:

Annual Report & Financial Statements

If you have any questions on this story, please contact press@brunelpp.org