People's Partnership

The default investment strategies are designed and monitored by an internal team reporting to CEO Patrick Heath-Lay, with oversight from the trustee board of The People's Pension Master Trust. The partnership uses a lifecycle approach that automatically derisks member portfolios as they approach retirement. External fund managers execute the underlying allocations, but the glidepath and asset-class mix are set internally.

It charges an annual management fee on assets and an administration rebate, but as a not-for-profit any surplus beyond operational costs and reserves is reinvested into the business or returned to members through lower charges and initiative funding. The structure means there is no dividend leakage to external owners. This is a distinct governance model from an insurer-owned workplace pension.

The default fund predominantly holds liquid public securities — developed-market equities, nominal and index-linked gilts, and corporate bonds. People's Partnership has signaled growing interest in illiquid assets such as infrastructure and private credit as the master trust's scale permits, but direct private-market co-investments or venture capital allocations are not a current material part of the default strategy.

Both are large UK master trusts serving the auto-enrolment market, but People's Partnership is a non-profit provider with no government ownership or public-service obligation, unlike NEST which was established by statute and operates under constrained investment and contribution rules. People's Partnership also actively lobbies for pension policy changes through memberships in the PLSA and ABI, a role NEST is structurally more restricted from claiming.

The legacy Construction Workers' Charitable Trust provides grants to support workers in hardship, a carryover from the firm's origins serving the building trades. People's Partnership also maintains a corporate partnership with the Good Things Foundation to fund digital inclusion and with Construction Youth Trust to support professional pathways into the industry.

No. People's Partnership invests exclusively on behalf of the members enrolled in its master trust. It does not manage capital for external institutional investors, family offices, or high-net-worth individuals, and it does not syndicate co-investment opportunities to third parties. Its entire asset pool is member-directed defined-contribution savings.

The firm applies ESG integration and active stewardship across its default portfolios, working through its memberships in the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association and the Principles for Responsible Investment to drive engagement with portfolio companies. It also uses its policy voice to advocate for mandatory climate transition plans in listed UK companies and has publicly supported TCFD-aligned disclosure in the master trust sector.