The tax timebomb

The decision by Royal Berkshire’s pension fund to conduct a longevity swap is an atypical action in a sector whose sky-high equity allocations and lack of risk awareness have seen the UK’s Local Government Pension Scheme plummet into the red over the past 18 months

For Nick Greenwood, pension manager for the £1 billion Royal County of Berkshire Pension Fund, the decision to hedge out 43% of its liabilities through a longevity swap was the culmination of a serious focus on liability management by the fund. “When I joined two-and-a-half years ago, the fund had a very traditional asset allocation and liability risk was never mentioned at board meetings. We’re now looking at the risks on the liability side more than the investment side,” he says.

And this is