National Grid UK Pension Scheme

National Grid UK Pension Scheme

The National Grid UK Pension Scheme (NGUKPS) operates as the funded defined-benefit plan for employees of the FTSE 100 transmission and distribution utility. As a multi-employer scheme, it pools assets across National Grid's operating entities, creating a single investment vehicle with a liability profile shaped by a unionized, long-tenured UK workforce. The scheme's trustee board, chaired by professional trustee Chris Martin of Independent Governance Group, oversees strategy, with day-to-day management historically led by a CEO — a role Chris Hogg vacated in 2024. NGUKPS deploys a strategy anchored in liability-driven investment principles. The portfolio combines substantial UK real estate exposure with a broader growth and income allocation. Direct property holdings, a distinguishing feature for a UK corporate pension scheme, include the Griffiths Way Retail Park in St Albans, the Callaghan Square office complex in Cardiff, and a UK Industrial Estates portfolio spanning multiple regions. These direct positions sit alongside allocations to equities, fixed income, and alternatives, managed through a mix of internal oversight and external fund commitments. The scheme's integrated risk management function — historically led by Per Nilsson Eklof until his 2024 transfer to consultant LCP alongside COO Rhonda Moon — monitors the gap between assets and projected benefit outflows. The governance model shifted materially in 2024. The departure of both the CEO and the COO/head of integrated risk management to LCP, a specialist pensions consultancy, suggests either a managed outsourcing arrangement or a deliberate restructuring of the scheme's executive layer. The trustee board, anchored by Martin, retains ultimate fiduciary responsibility. NGUKPS is a signatory to the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment and a member of both the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change and the Paris Aligned Investment Initiative, reflecting its parent sponsor's regulated utility exposure to net-zero transition policy. The scheme's structural differentiator is its direct UK real estate portfolio — relatively unusual for a corporate defined-benefit plan, which more commonly gains property exposure through pooled funds or REITs. This direct ownership gives the trustee board tangible, inflation-linked assets that align with its long-dated sterling liabilities, a configuration shaped by decades of accruing obligations within a regulated monopoly employer.