Nilsson: Brightwell is the next stage of BTPSM's development
BT Pension Scheme Management, the executive arm of the £47bn BT Pension Scheme (BTPS), has rebranded as Brightwell as part of a push into the provision of services to other schemes – also announcing a fiduciary management deal with the £1bn defined benefit (DB) section of the EE Pension Scheme.
Brightwell chief executive Morten Nilsson said the move to third-party provision follows BTPS' "transformation" over the past five years.
Nilsson said that, following a competitive tender process, Brightwell would take over the management of the DB section of the EE Pension Scheme (EEPS), which has around 8,000 members and £1bn of assets, from today - providing the scheme with fiduciary management services overseeing investment strategy, portfolio management, manager selection and oversight.
He said the organisation was also "opening its doors" to other schemes that shared its beliefs and would like to work in a different way - adding he believed the move would both help other schemes, who could benefit from the BT Pension Scheme's scale, as well as the BTPS itself, who could benefit from additional scale advantages from working with other schemes.
Nilsson said: "DB pension schemes are at an inflection point. The economic outlook is challenging, the portfolio risks posed by climate change need careful management and members expect high-quality online services which demand increased investment."
"We devised and implemented an ambitious programme of transformational improvement to the services we provide BTPS and learned a huge amount along the way. We are delighted that from today we can mark the next stage of our development by offering our unique skills and experience to EEPS."
BTPS chair of trustees Otto Thoresen added: "BTPS is maturing as a Scheme. Making Brightwell's services available to EE and other schemes helps to answer the challenge of the scheme securing access to the depth of resource we need to maintain quality service for our members and safeguard their long-term interests."
EEPS chair Jonathan Clarke added: "We're delighted to be working with Brightwell and believe the partnership will deliver significant benefits for the scheme and its members. As schemes like ours mature, it's vital that they maintain access to the right mix of experience and expertise and we're pleased to be working with a like-minded service provider able to meet our needs now and in the future."
Deep alignment
Nilsson believed Brightwell's third-party offering could help provide a greater degree of alignment for schemes that partnered with the organisation.
He explained: "One of the things I feel quite strongly about is there are quite a lot of providers and advisors in the market that offer fragmented solutions or fragmented advice - I can't see that anyone is fully aligned with the schemes that they're managing. One of the things that's been very successful for us working with the BT Pension Scheme is that there is that full alignment and that's what we're seeking to deliver to others also."
Nilsson said for the BT Pension Scheme the investment focus had been on funding stability and the funding position; while on the member service side the focus had been on member outcomes and member engagement, not on service level agreements - deep alignment he felt was a key differentiating factor for Brightwell.
He said: "It is that really deep alignment that we feel is different and also having a team that understands the end-to-end… We think it's very valuable and having people who've done it before, those who haven't just advised on a solution but actually implemented and executed it."
Non-exec hires
In line with its operational status as a full scope MiFID Investment firm, Brightwell has also appointed two new non-executive directors to its board - Denise Le Gal, the chair of the Brunel Pension Partnership; and Kevin Troup, a non-executive who is a former fund manager with firms such as Standard Life Investments and Martin Currie.
Le Gal joins Brightwell as independent non-executive chair and will be responsible for leading the board and ensuring it meets its collective responsibilities. She will also chair the board's remuneration committee.
Troup joins as a non-executive director and will be chair of the board's risk, audit and compliance committee with responsibility for ensuring robust oversight of Brightwell's risk management approach and internal controls.
About Brightwell
In rebranding BTPSM to Brightwell, the organisation said it wanted to have something which "nodded" to its heritage but also sounded positive. As a result, its new name is an evolution of the name of one of the BTPS' trustee companies, BriTel Fund Trustees.
Over the past five years, BTPSM has invested heavily in technology, people and processes.
In 2021, BTPSM implemented Procentia's IntelliPen system for the scheme's member administration services (after buying Procentia itself in 2019), including the launch of a new scheme website and personalised member portal.
As a result of these investments, the organisation said that BTPS' CEM global pension benchmarking score for service quality in member services rose from 48 out of 100 in 2018 to 82 out of 100 in 2022 - moving from the bottom, to the top, of its peer group which comprises some of the largest DB pension schemes in the UK.
In addition, BTPS' own member satisfaction score, based on an annual survey with members, has increased from 63% in 2018 to 87% in 2023.
Brightwell said it would continue to support BTPS under its new name and there would be no changes to the BTPS itself or for its members. It added that BTPSM subsidiary, Procentia, would continue to expand as a Brightwell group company.
