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Three pension giants have made a fresh £3bn wave of commitments to invest in rental homes, infrastructure and fast-growing companies, ahead of a government-backed meeting in Birmingham to discuss how they can work together to boost their investments.
Legal & General said on Monday it would invest a further £2bn across housing and infrastructure over the next five years, in addition to a previous pledge made in 2022 to invest £2.5bn in build-to-rent homes.
AustralianSuper, Australia’s largest pension fund, announced an initial commitment to invest £500mn within 12 months in UK residential projects, with a focus on student, co-living and residential homes, and an ambition to become a “top five operator” of rental homes by the end of the decade.
Meanwhile, the £53bn state-backed National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) has pledged to invest a further £500mn in its private equity mandate with Schroders in the next 12 months, with £100mn expected to be channelled into UK companies.
The move comes ahead of pension summits in London and Birmingham this week that aim to strengthen relationships between institutional investors and policymakers as well as identify barriers to investment in the UK.
“This is about getting Britain building again, bringing our savings, our investors and our regions together to deliver the homes, infrastructure and industries that will drive growth,” said UK chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Residential housing has become more attractive to institutional investors in recent years as housing constraints in Britain have had a significant impact on rents. As of 2025, average UK rents have risen by 8.7% year on year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Vicky Stanley, senior investment director for real assets at AustralianSuper, said she liked the UK’s residential sector in particular because of the “structural supply and demand imbalance that’s built up over decades”.
L&G said its latest investment commitment would create about 24,000 jobs and deliver roughly 10,000 new social and affordable homes, “delivering on L&G’s dual purpose of generating financial returns and societal benefits”.
The announcements come as Britain’s largest pension providers have joined a new Sterling 20 partnership, where they hope to work together to plot the ways that funds will be better matched to UK infrastructure and growth projects. The moniker has been viewed as an effort to replicate the Canadian Maple 8 pension model.
A delegation of Australian superannuation fund leaders are meeting with their British counterparts and civil servants in London on Monday to discuss investment opportunities in the UK. On Tuesday, the so-called Sterling 20 will meet at a regional investment summit in Birmingham to discuss access to investment opportunities across the country.
The initiative follows on from the Mansion House Accord, a voluntary commitment earlier this year from 17 of the UK’s largest pension providers to invest at least 5 per cent of default fund assets in UK private markets by 2030.
Nest started its private equity programme three years ago and now has £2bn invested in the sector, almost 20 per cent of which was in the UK.
“We are already seeing good deal flow across all private markets and we are up to nearly 20 per cent in private markets in the total portfolio,” said Mark Fawcett, chief executive of Nest’s investment business, adding that “we welcome any initiative that increases the range of opportunities for us”.