Clara Pensions’ pipeline of deals has “more than doubled” to £10-15bn since the announcement of its first transaction, its CEO, Simon True, has revealed.

Speaking at the Hymans Robertson DB Future Focus conference, True stated that since the announcement of its deal with Sears Retail Pension Scheme, “I would say the pipeline of active engagement has more than doubled”.

“We had had around £5bn of active discussions with either trustees or sponsors or advisers and that’s moved onto £10-15bn at the moment,” he explained.

“They are at various stages of maturity. While you might see announcements relatively soon, you will not see £10bn of announcements by the half year,” True added.

The smallest scheme Clara is currently speaking to is around £50m in size and the largest at several billion, True said.

These deals are a range of being “sponsor-led, some trustee and then unique cases with PPF+ situations, and then super trustee-led situations with no sponsor there”, he added.

In November last year, the trustees of the Sears Retail Pension Scheme agreed to transfer around 9,600 members to Clara Pensions. The deal was the UK's first superfund transaction, following Clara Pensions becoming the first DB superfund to complete The Pensions Regulator’s assessment process in 2021.

Looking ahead, True stated that there will be more than one superfund.

“One of them may be sponsored by the UK government. As long as they stick to the 1,800 smaller schemes, they can spend the next three decades consolidating and tending to those assets under management and will be happy with that,” True said.

“The other professional consolidators will be flavours of consolidation and that’s great as that provides more choice, as long as it does not get to the point where it becomes overwhelming for trustees to understand their options,” he added.

---