The government is focused on making the UK pensions and investment market the best version of itself rather than “cloning” other countries’ approaches.
Speaking at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) annual conference via video call to discuss the government’s ambitions to encourage pension schemes to invest in illiquids, sustainable assets and UK growth, economic secretary to the treasury and MP Andrew Griffith praised the UK market saying its “world-class” and “not short of ideas”.
He said: “My vision and the pension minister’s vision is to be the best version of ourselves, not try to clone what other people have. We’d be kidding ourselves if we said there weren’t barriers that hold us back but when we can identify them and work together to knock them down.
“We have a huge opportunity in this country, no one should talk us down whether it’s the amounts of capital that our pensions have, or whether it’s our fantastic range of investment infrastructure opportunities, start-up and scale-ups – you couldn’t be in a better territory with the UK to invest in those.”
Griffith also touched on productive capital and listed the areas of focus which include institutional capital, pension capital and private savings and investments saying that it will be mentioned in the autumn statement which Jeremy Hunt is expected to deliver next month.
Griffith said: “I see no conflict whatsoever between unleashing productive capital into some of the fastest growing parts of our economy and delivering benefits to beneficiaries both in the certainty that we can provide them with good income in retirement but also the opportunity for growth and performance along the way.”
He explained what the government actually means by ‘UK growth’ explaining that it’s not one particularly one thing but it is ultimately about unleashing long-term capital. He said there’s a broad appetite for sectors and a broad range of assets not necessarily just private equity.
He said: “What we mean by UK growth is tackling the long-term challenge of all West economies, we’re all at least 100 basis points or 200 basis points shy of what long-term trend growth for an economy would be.
“The big ideas that are changing the world, whether its AI, quantum, life sciences or the shift to a low carbon-based economy, in the UK, it’s world-class. We’re in the pack and we are a leading innovator nation.”
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