Spotlight on UK LGPS: Border to Coast’s £120bn scale opens door to deeper global partnerships

Border to Coast Pensions Partnership is taking a controlled approach to integrating seven new partner funds – which are both clients and shareholders – as its £120bn AUM opens up opportunities to work more strategically with global asset owners and managers.

Ewan McCulloch, chief stakeholder officer at Border to Coast, says the investment pool’s increased scale had raised its profile with other global asset owners, allowing it to operate “in a more strategic manner alongside them”.

Border to Coast grew from around £64bn in August 2025 to £120bn on 1 April 2026 after seven former ACCESS funds formally joined the pool.

The UK government’s Fit for the Future reforms have accelerated elements of Border to Coast’s 2030 vision, which was agreed with partner funds in summer 2024, but have not materially changed its overall direction, McCulloch said.

Instead, some elements of the strategy have been brought forward, with capabilities such as investment advice needing to be established sooner because they are now required by legislation.

He explains: “What we’ve always said is that we do the right things for the right reason. That’s about delivering effective, attainable solutions.”

McCulloch adds that the pool had made clear to the government that it would not necessarily meet all the criteria from 1 April, to avoid building interim solutions that would incur costs without adding value.

“We made it very clear to the government that we will be progressively meeting the Fit for the Future criteria in a structured, strategic way that adds value to the partnership,” he says.

The pool has taken the same approach to transitioning assets from the seven new partners – Cambridgeshire, East Sussex, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Northamptonshire and West Sussex – which between them brought around £45bn in assets under management.

McCulloch points out that investments across the new and original partner funds have been structured differently, meaning Border to Coast needs to build new capabilities and services.

At the same time, the way the pool operates will change. Historically, partner funds have decided which of the pool’s propositions to invest in but in future, Border to Coast will support funds in developing their strategies and take greater responsibility for implementing them.

“What we need to be doing is making sure that we have the right set of propositions that can reflect their investment beliefs and investment strategies,” McCulloch says.

The pool also needs to consider how it transitions assets that are currently held outside the pool.

“That process will take several months, if not longer, but again, it’s about how we do it in a thoughtful, structured manner, minimising costs – not just a rush to get the assets inside the pool,” he says.

Engaging with the affected funds and bringing them on board as full and equal shareholders and customers “absorbed quite a lot of the organisation’s time”, according to McCulloch.

The investment pool has also focused on the culture of the partnership and ensuring there are agreed ways of working across the expanded organisation.

“Obviously, with the expansion of the partnership, we need to make sure that everybody has a clear voice in how we develop the future of the organisation,” he notes.

Scale as an enabler

McCulloch says Border to Coast had already identified the benefits of scale in its 2030 strategy and recognised that there could come a point when it would look to strengthen the partnership by expanding it.

The pool sees scale as an enabler, with McCulloch stressing that scale by itself “doesn’t mean anything” other than providing greater capacity and ability to deliver value for partner funds.

Border to Coast is now the UK’s largest asset owner, with its increased scale giving it a higher profile with other global asset owners and allowing it to operate “in a more strategic manner alongside them”.

“We’re now having more structured engagements with like-minded asset owners about how we can collaborate and actually work more effectively together,” he says.

Scale also makes it easier for the pool to establish strategic relationships with key asset managers.

“They will often view us as a cornerstone investor of their private markets strategies, which can deliver significant value because of the consistency of our deployment of capital,” he continues.

Border to Coast has around £23bn of invested and committed capital within its private markets programme and expects to deploy “several billion pounds every year consistently for the next few years”, as McCulloch puts it.

This makes the pool a “much more attractive partner for the asset managers”.

However, neither the reforms nor the pool’s increased scale have changed the type of investments or assets it is targeting, McCulloch explains.

Even before the Fit for the Future reforms, Border to Coast had full capabilities across its four main asset classes: private markets, real estate, equities and fixed income.

Building investment capabilities

As the pool has expanded from 11 to 18 partner funds, it has continued to recruit “quite a lot of people” to its central Leeds office, reflecting the expansion of its responsibilities.

Headcount grew by about 19% to 209 staff over the year to March 2026. This included new hires in the investment team, where the pool is building a four-strong advisory team, and the portfolio solutions group. This group is intended to ensure Border to Coast has the capacity and capability to take greater responsibility for investing partner fund assets.

McCulloch says this is also being done in a “thoughtful manner” to ensure the pool recruits the “right people with the right skill set that understand the culture of the organisation and the culture of the partnership”.

In summer 2025, Border to Coast appointed Peter Gent as head of investment advisory. The function will fulfil the requirement for the pool to be the primary source of investment advice for the partner funds.

The advisory function will work with partner funds to agree investment beliefs and draft investment strategy statements, which the investment team will then implement.

With the new partner funds on board and the first phase of the reforms completed, McCulloch says the immediate priority was building the capabilities needed for the pool to become “completely compliant with Fit for the Future”.

“That will probably take another several months to fully implement, and then it’s delivering upon our purpose, which is to deliver effective investment returns for our funds to allow them to pay pensions in an affordable and sustainable manner,” he notes.