The UK’s workplace pension providers are set to be a growing source of institutional capital for infrastructure funds.

Seventeen of the UK’s largest such schemes a year ago signed up to the Mansion House Accord, which commits signatories to allocate at least 10% of their defined contribution assets into private markets by 2030. A sizeable amount is likely to be directed to unlisted infrastructure.

One of the signatories was the People’s Partnership, which runs the roughly GBP 40bn UK defined contribution specialist People’s Pension master trust on behalf of its roughly 7 million members. Historically it has invested largely into liquid assets such as equities and fixed income. But last year, on the back of the accord, it set a goal of investing up to GBP 4bn of illiquid, private markets investments into infrastructure and real estate.

To this end the People’s Partnership last summer launched a “tender” to find infrastructure fund managers to allocate part of this GBP 4bn, said Marija Simpraga, who joined the People’s Partnership in May 2025 as its co-head of real assets, in a recent podcast interview.

Almost a year on from launching the lucrative “tender” for a sizeable chunk of the real assets’ GBP 4 bn deployment target, what kind of manager is it targeting and how close is it to selecting one?

Infrastructure anchor

The process has clearly been competitive. “We’ve had dozens of conversations with different managers,” said Simpraga, who previously led private infrastructure research at Legal & General Investment Management, on the podcast.

Raymond Wright, who co-heads the People’s Partnership’s real assets strategy alongside Simpraga, said on the same podcast that the People’s Partnership is looking to “anchor a position” in infrastructure.

The managers it selects are also likely to be at least partly focused on the UK, given Simpraga said on the podcast that her real assets arm for infrastructure has an “over-allocation to the UK” while “the rest of the portfolio is [expected to be] very diversified geographically”.

Part of the reason for the UK focus is practical: It is easier for the UK-based People’s Partnership “logistically” to invest in the UK, she said, adding “there is also less concern around hedging” and “the taxation situation is much straightforward”.

Simpraga also said she was “surprised to the positive” by “the richness of the pipeline we were shown” by “multiple” infrastructure managers the People’s Partnership had spoken to. This “solidified”, she added, her team’s view that “we are in a point in time where the UK is in a very good place to put the capital [for infrastructure real assets] to work”.

Given this focus on the UK, infrastructure fund managers based there are a likely place for the People’s Partnership’s real assets arm to allocate some of its capital. But two key UK-focused managers, Dalmore and Equitix, both bid unsuccessfully for commitments from PE, three sources following the process said. The People’s Partnership, Dalmore and Equitix declined to comment.

Could the People’s Partnership be targeting managers with more of a global focus? Global managers including GCM Grosvenor and I Squared Capital also bid, three sources following the process said, while a further source said the People’s Partnership, at least at this stage, is “looking for the big name” managers. GCM Grosvenor and I Squared Capital declined to comment.

GIP’s core infrastructure strategy also took part in the process and to be having advanced talks, the three sources said. They added that the People’s Partnership is looking to allocate between GBP 750m and GBP 1bn including co-investment capital to GIP’s core strategy. GIP declined to comment.

Adding value

The People’s Partnership is targeting managers with a broad range of risks, which might work well for larger managers.

On the one hand the People’s Partnership is seeking a “broadly diversified portfolio” with “inflation linked returns and resilient cashflows, said Raymond Wright on the podcast.

But on the other, given its members are on average aged 38, the People’s Partnership also wants to “lean into the growth aspect” with some “value add”, added Wright, who previously worked at London CIV, the asset poling company for London’s 32 local government pension schemes.

In terms of managers, the People’s Partnership wants to start with one with a “generalist exposure” to infrastructure rather than sector specific portfolios, said Simpraga on the podcast. The People’s Partnership already has asset specific exposure through its investments in listed assets, she added.

The People’s Partnership is also looking for managers willing to accept competitive management fees, said the three sources following the process.

If this is the case then the winning manager will have to weigh this up with the People’s Partnership’s sizeable commitments.

Furthermore, getting a foot in the door with UK workplace providers today could bode well for the future, with so much extra DC capital set to flow to the sector.