The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed plans to publish estimates on the proportion of pooled investment vehicles (PIV) invested in liability-driven investment (LDI) pooled funds by defined benefit and hybrid (DBH) pension schemes.

The ONS announced the change amid increased demand for insight into the UK funded occupational pensions landscape following recent events, including the Bank of England’s intervention in UK gilts markets in autumn 2022.

Indeed, the ONS highlighted this increased demand as demonstration of the importance of continuing to engage with users to develop pensions statistics, confirming a number of other upcoming changes to the quarterly statistics.

In particular, the ONS confirmed plans to publish data on the percentage of private sector defined contribution (DC) pension schemes offering different retirement products, such as drawdown, to capture the response of pensions schemes to the 2015 pension freedoms.

The ONS also announced plans to share high-level estimates of UK funded occupational pension schemes’ expenses, noting that whilst there is currently limited publicly available data on this, these estimates are expected to ensure better understanding, and may reveal trends across financial years as well as longer-term trends.

In addition to this, the ONS announced plans to include estimates of investment performance by scheme type, to offer insight to the performance of the different scheme types over the FSPS timeseries, which covers events such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is also aiming to quality assure data on transfers in and transfers out of private sector DC and DBH pension schemes, with this data expected to be of interest to key users such as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

In addition to the upcoming work, the ONS highlighted a number of changes already made to the statistics, noting that improvements to data collection from large DC pension schemes have resulted in more robust estimates for DC active, deferred and pensioner membership.

It also suggested that the newly published non–pension entitlement liabilities and direct investment gilts holdings for private sector defined benefit and hybrid schemes have supported users’ understanding of recent financial events affecting funded occupational pension schemes’ liability driven investment (LDI) strategies.

"The development of funded occupational pension schemes statistics continues to be a priority for the ONS," the update stated.

"We have established a work programme of upcoming priorities based on the needs of users, including our key stakeholders.

"It is important to note that for each of the items identified in the programme, data are subject to quality assurance and disclosure processes which may limit the level of detail we are able to publish."

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