PIP passes £1bn fundraising mark

The Pensions Infrastructure Platform (PIP), an infrastructure business set up by the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), today announced that it has raised more than £1 billion (€1.4 billion; $1.6 billion) since inception.

The headline figure comprises the more than £500 million PIP has collected for the Dalmore PPP Equity PIP Fund, the platform’s first vehicle, and the more than £130 million it has secured for the Aviva Investors PIP Solar Photovoltaics Fund, the second in the series.

The former, focused on core infrastructure public-private partnerships (PPPs) and managed by UK-based Dalmore Capital, has a hard cap of £600 million; the latter, focused on rooftop solar and managed by Aviva Investors, was launched in April with a target of £250 million.

PIP also announced today that it has secured more than £370 million in another co-investment with Dalmore Capital, without disclosing the remit and overall size of the transaction.

The platform was launched in 2013 with an overall target size of £2 billion. Focused on low-risk infrastructure assets with long-term cash returns of RPI + 2 to 5 percent, it is aiming to charge fees to its members of around 50 basis points without any minimum commitment.

“Historically it’s been difficult and expensive for individual pension funds to invest in infrastructure on their own and the PIP was set up to change this by providing another, better, option for infrastructure investing,” said Mike Weston, PIP chief executive, in a statement.

“PIP has been working with established asset managers to deliver attractively structured and priced specialist infrastructure investment funds for pension funds small and large.”

He added that the platform is now looking to gain authorisation for acting as a direct infrastructure investment manager for UK pension schemes, with progress in the matter expected later this year.