- The Dutch regulator, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), has made amendments to its entry template, to increase the ease of use for pension funds.

DNB expects that this will make the submission process and assessment of entry notifications more efficient and effective. With the entry template, DNB aims to give funds a complete picture of all legally required elements that an entry decision must contain. This offers DNB and pension funds the opportunity to jointly achieve an efficient process for handling an entry notification.

- Phoenix Group and Schroders have announced plans to launch a new private markets investment manager with a £1bn initial commitment, increasing to £2.5bn over three years.

The investment manager, Future Growth Capital (FGC), will design and manage UK and global multi-private asset solutions for UK insurance and pension clients to open access to a broader range of innovative companies and investment opportunities for millions of UK pension clients. Initially, it will leverage Schroders’ pioneering Long-Term Asset Fund (LTAF) investment platform, providing investment advice to the fourth and fifth LTAFs planned for launch by Schroders’ dedicated private markets business, Schroders Capital, in the UK.

- The workplace pension participation rate of eligible employees in Great Britain remained at 88 per cent in 2023, although the total number saving into a pension rose by 400,000 to around 20.8 million, data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has revealed.

The DWP’s latest update on workplace pension participation and savings trends showed that most groups have seen trends in participation stabilise in recent years, with participation differences across the population having narrowed since the introduction of auto-enrolment in 2012. According to the update, the overall participation rate of all employees in Great Britain into a workplace pension was 80 per cent in 2023, equal to 22.3 million savers, a small rise on the 79 per cent (22.1 million) participating in the previous year.

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