The head of the London Stock Exchange, Dame Julia Hoggett, has called for pension providers to offer clearer details on the composition of their extensive portfolios. She suggested that enhanced transparency would motivate these funds to support more UK-based companies.
Dame Julia told City AM that it should be simpler for savers to identify where their retirement savings are invested. She believes that clearer reporting would help speed up funds' pledges to allocate more capital to UK equities and private assets.
This intervention adds to existing pressure on the UK's savings sector to increase the proportion of their portfolios invested in the domestic economy. In 2025, 17 pension providers agreed to invest at least five per cent of their funds in UK private assets and infrastructure as part of the Mansion House Accord.
Despite the UK having the world’s second-largest pension pot, only four per cent of schemes' capital is held in UK assets. Over the past two decades, allocation to London-listed equities has decreased from over 50 per cent to approximately 4.4 per cent of the average pension fund.
Dame Julia also noted that the UK is an international outlier by offering tax incentives to pension funds and Isa savers without requiring a portion of that subsidy to be invested in the UK economy.