PLSA 2023: China not a priority for UK pension investment chiefs

Pumping Britain's pension capital into the world's fastest-growing market is not a priority. 

In fact, some of the UK's largest pension funds seem outright reluctant to engage in investment adventures in China. 

As Britain's pension fund community gathers in Edinburgh for the the investment conference of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), investment chiefs taking part in a panel discussion made it clear they take an extremely cautious approach to the Chinese market.

When asked about their exposure in the world's second-largest economy, Tony Borccardo, Barclays UK Retirement Fund chief investment officer, told delegates that China is not off limits, but certainly not a key market, not now, not in the future.

"Listen, it is psat of our trade links, we invest in way that is limited, in very specific opportunities, our principle investments there are very small and time-limited," he said.

However, Borccardo, who has been at the helm of Barclays pension fund since 2008, did add that "over the last 10 years we returned huge amounts of profit from China to the Barclays pension fund.

In addition, Wyn Francis, who heads Brightwell, formerly BTPS’ primary service provider, which manages BT pension schemes' investments, said: "We do not have regional allocations [in China], but within those mandates we have strong alignments and our experience from the whole Russia-Ukraine issue is that we don’t want to be over-exposed in China."

"I would expect a similar approach to China," he stressed.

BTPS is the UK’s largest company pension scheme with close to £60 billion of assets, serving around 280,000 members. Each year, the scheme pays out around £2.5 billion in pension and other benefits to the scheme’s 200,000 retired members.

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