{"id":655649,"date":"2026-06-24T10:53:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/655649\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:53:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:53:42","slug":"guernsey-states-asked-to-invest-pensions-under-proposed-2-billion-sovereign-wealth-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/655649\/","title":{"rendered":"Guernsey States asked to invest pensions under proposed \u00a32 billion sovereign wealth fund"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guernsey<\/a> Deputy Jennifer Strachan has called for the States to create a central sovereign wealth fund for all of its investments – totalling just under \u00a32 billion.<\/p>\n

She believes it will improve transparency and keep more money on the island, as 95% of the Government’s investments are currently made overseas.<\/p>\n

The politician, who also serves as a non-executive director for Barclays Insurance, says a shift in strategy could also be more profitable.<\/p>\n

What is a sovereign wealth fund?<\/p>\n

A sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is a state-owned investment structure managed by a government to grow wealth.<\/p>\n

It is different from other strategies because it pools together different assets, such as cash, pensions, and bonds, and focusses on long-term returns.<\/p>\n

Why Guernsey?<\/p>\n

Deputy Strachan says that, in Guernsey, a SWF would create a “more holistic way of viewing our investible assets net of liabilities” – in short, allowing investment decisions to be better informed by seeing the whole picture in one place.<\/p>\n

Currently, investments can be hard to assess. The State Assembly Scrutiny Committee recently criticised the island’s accounts for being hard to interpret. Deputy Strachan says that a SWF would change that.<\/p>\n

What difference would this make to local investment?<\/p>\n

A key part of the politician’s plan is increasing the amount of government spending on the island.<\/p>\n

She points to the fact that, before a restructuring in 2022, close to 80% of investments were made by local fund managers – which she says earned them roughly \u00a32 million a year.<\/p>\n

That year, a new Stated Investment Board (SIB) was established and local investments dropped to 5%.<\/p>\n

Deputy Strachan estimates this reduced local fund manager income by\u00a0\u00a31.15 million.<\/p>\n

In her Assembly speech on Tuesday, the Deputy argued that increasing local investment again through a large SWF would give fund managers greater leverage. She also said that it would feed back through in high levels of income tax.<\/p>\n

SWFs also often aim to invest these larger sums into local infrastructure projects, with Deputy Strachan suggesting a wind farm project where the income generated is ringfenced for further on-island investment. She points to Norway’s management of oil receipts as an example.<\/p>\n

Risk<\/p>\n

Deputy Strachan believes that the larger investment pool could also allow fund managers to increase their level of risk and potential returns.<\/p>\n

The last three years saw the SIB’s public investments underperform by a cumulative 5%, more than \u00a3200 million.<\/p>\n

\u00a3200 million<\/p>\n

How much Guernsey’s public investments underperformed in the last three fiscal years<\/p>\n

Some might worry the proposed changes would put pensions at risk, but the Deputy says that would not be the case.<\/p>\n

She told ITV News that “these are commitments by the States of Guernsey and will be paid by the States of Guernsey”.<\/p>\n

Deputy Strachan went on to argue that the island has the reserves to cover pension commitments.<\/p>\n

She went on to say that a SWF “would be exactly the type of vehicle that could ensure we have funds today, and are also investing wisely for the future”.<\/p>\n

The state of Guernsey’s finances<\/p>\n

The latest States of Guernsey accounts show that day-to-day finances are operating at a surplus of \u00a345 million.<\/p>\n

However, the Government’s report cautioned that “much of the improvement reflects one-off items rather than a sustained improvement in underlying finances”. <\/p>\n

In fact, cash balances have fallen by \u00a39 million and there is an underlying funding gap of \u00a350 million.<\/p>\n

Timeline<\/p>\n

The Deputy says that she would like to see the plan implemented “as soon as possible”. She requested that the Government launch a six-month review that she will be “following up on”.<\/p>\n

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know\u2026<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guernsey Deputy Jennifer Strachan has called for the States to create a central sovereign wealth fund for all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-655649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}