Brief

H/Advisors Cicero has been the retained public affairs agency to the BT Pension Scheme and its management company (recently rebranded as Brightwell) since 2019.

We are tasked with providing ongoing strategic advice to the Scheme and its Trustees, as well as support with Government and regulatory policy and cross-party political engagement.

The BT Pension Scheme is one of the UK’s largest private sector DB schemes with well over £40bn in assets under management. Since working with the Scheme, Cicero has helped to increase its profile and impact in conversations with policymakers on a wide range of key strategic issues.

Strategy & Execution

We have supported BTPS in developing its key messages around the role of the Scheme in supporting investment in UK infrastructure and regeneration projects.

H/Advisors Cicero worked closely with BTPS when it became one of the first UK schemes to set an ambitious target of achieving Net Zero emissions across its entire portfolio by 2035. We supported BTPS in communicating this target to policymakers and engaging extensively in the run-up to the COP26 conference in Glasgow.

We also worked with the Scheme to develop and communicate its evidence base in relation to the reform and effective replacement of the Retail Price Index measure of inflation, which was a major strategic challenge for the Scheme. We worked closely on a project with the Pensions Policy Institute to quantify the impact of this change.

Result

BTPS has significantly increased its impact as a key voice in the debate around a range of policy challenges. They were invited to sit on the Productive Finance Working Group convened by HM Treasury, the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority, which aims to facilitate greater investment in long-term, less liquid assets.

We achieved significant political backing for BTPS’s 2035 Net Zero announcement, which was endorsed by the COP26 President Alok Sharma MP and Labour’s then Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Reynolds MP.