Scottish Widows has launched a UK venture growth portfolio within its CG Scottish Widows Growth long-term asset fund (LTAF).<\/p>\n
The mandate launches with new investments in areas of strategic importance to the UK, including quantum computing, advanced battery technology and AI-enabled healthcare.<\/p>\n
Aberdeen Investments, which manages the growth sub-fund for Scottish Widows, has appointed IP Group to manage a UK venture growth portfolio within the fund, helping bring private markets exposure to workplace pension savers.<\/p>\n
Scottish Widows is among the first UK pension schemes to actively allocate members\u2019 capital to UK venture growth by connecting patient institutional capital with high-potential British businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt demonstrates a model that can be expanded over time, increasing the flow of long-term pension capital into high-growth UK businesses, as part of the fund\u2019s broader global private markets remit,\u201d the UK pension fund stated.<\/p>\n
It added that the mandate is designed to support stronger retirement outcomes for members and \u201caddress a critical constraint on the UK innovation economy: the availability of meaningful follow-on funding for companies ready to commercialise and expand\u201d.<\/p>\n
The first investments from IP Group will be deployed across several strategically important areas of UK innovation, spanning quantum computing, advanced battery technology and AI-enabled healthcare.<\/p>\n
Scottish Widows said that initial investments are expected to include Oxford Quantum Circuits, which is building commercially available quantum computing systems; Quantum Motion, which is building scalable silicon-based quantum computers designed for mass adoption; Nyobolt, whose ultra-fast-charging battery technology is advancing high-performance energy storage; and Genomics Limited, which is applying AI, machine learning and large-scale genetic datasets to transform preventative healthcare and drug discovery.<\/p>\n
Peter Fitzgerald, chief investment officer of Scottish Widows, said: \u201cWe believe pension savers should be able to benefit from the growth and innovation taking place across the UK. Our proposition helps connect our workplace pension customers\u2019 long-term savings with some of Britain\u2019s most innovative, high-growth companies, giving them access to investment opportunities that have traditionally been available mainly to institutional investors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nalaka De Silva, head of private markets solutions at Aberdeen Investments, said: \u201cThe UK has no shortage of scientific excellence and does not lack entrepreneurship or talent to develop globally relevant ideas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat competitive companies have lacked is sufficient pools of patient domestic capital to help them expand and grow. This partnership turns intent into investment: we are extremely proud to deliver one of the first active allocations by a UK DC workplace pension proposition to back British science and technology companies for the long-term benefit of pension members.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scottish Widows has launched a UK venture growth portfolio within its CG Scottish Widows Growth long-term asset fund…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-821894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821894","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=821894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}