UK pension scheme NEST has become the latest to establish a ‘members’ assembly’ to guide its sustainability decisions.
The £60bn (€68.9bn) fund, which has more members than any other workplace scheme in the country, will convene a group “selected to reflect” that membership.
They will be asked to “feed into NEST’s ongoing decision making for how it invests and acts as an active and responsible asset owner”, and to make recommendations on key issues that affect their pensions.
Specifically, the Member Assembly will seek to establish the values of NEST savers, and whether they could be better represented in investment strategies and decisions.
Last year, the fund confirmed it was working on the project with Emmeline Cooper, an academic specialising in deliberative democracy, and one of the architects behind similar efforts in the Netherlands.
In 2024, Pensioenfonds Detailhandel, the Dutch pension fund for retail workers, selected nearly 50 members to participate in a ‘mini public’, through which they were taught about their chosen sustainability and finance topics.
The group subsequently developed requests for how the fund should update its approach to responsible investment, and the board has since implemented some of those, while putting others to a wider vote.
A spokesperson for fellow Dutch fund Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (PFZW) told IPE it was also “considering to involve participants in a more interactive way”, which could result in something like a Member Assembly or Mini Public.
“But nothing is final yet,” she stated.
The trend reflects a broader debate about who decides how asset owners should make sustainability-related decisions.
Critics of the ESG movement say investment execs and stewardship teams are using savers’ money to pursue their own ideological objectives.
By getting formal input from members, pension funds are hoping to firm up their mandate to integrate certain sustainability topics that cannot be justified on the basis of short-term financial risk.
NEST did not say how big its Member Assembly would be, but in documentation from 2025, it said it thought “c.50 -100 [people] was an appropriate size”.
Those members will meet over “two weekend sessions” to hear from specialists and discuss key topics. They will then “develop recommendations for NEST’s leadership”.
According to the 2025 document: “These recommendations will be an input into the triennial review of NEST Statement of Investment principles, which is due to be updated in 2026”.
“Whilst the focus of the discussions will be on how we invest money, there will likely also be valuable other insights produced during the process,” it added.
“The aim is to hold the assembly in January/February 2026 and publish the outcomes of the assembly by May 2026.”
Ian Cornelius, the chief executive officer of NEST, said: “The Member Assembly is a bold step towards making pensions more democratic, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of our members.”
The process is being overseen by an external advisory group, comprising academics and practitioners in the field of financial governance.
