Pensions - Articles - PLSA comment on the Kingman review

 Caroline Escott, Policy Lead Investment and Stewardship, PLSA, said: “Pension funds are significant investors in UK companies, with surveys suggesting that DB schemes have roughly a quarter of their assets in listed equities, and over 25% of this invested in UK listed companies. The UK corporate governance regime is internationally well-regarded and it’s vital firms are run in line with corporate governance best practice to protect and grow the value of people’s retirement savings. It is also important that pension scheme investors can rely upon a well-regulated audit market which ensures high quality audits of the companies they invest in.

 We hope the measures outlined in Kingman’s report will help ensure that a new body can work better towards the interests of investors. Although we believe that the Stewardship Code was a significant step forward, we support moves to ensure the Code helps schemes tell how well their asset manager is doing on stewardship. We welcome the Review’s recognition that the FRC needs to develop deeper relationships with the investor community, but think that a key step in doing so would be to ensure that the FRC, or its successor body, employs more staff with investor practitioner experience and expertise.”