What happens to the money you pay into your British Transport Police Force Superannuation Fund once it leaves your wages?   

How it works – our Trustee

The money from your BTPFSF contributions is carefully managed by a group of specialist employer and elected member representatives, known as the “Trustee”. The Trustee’s job – along with the help of our team of pensions and investment specialists, is to regularly check that the Fund administration and financial investments are doing well and to keep you informed.

Our financial specialists

The Trustee works closely with our team of pensions and investment experts. Together, their responsibility is to pay your pension securely, affordably and sustainably. With their combined professional knowledge and financial market insight, this team makes careful and informed decisions on where to invest your money, so that your pension pot grows and you receive the benefits you were promised. These investment and financial specialists are known as the Fund’s “investment manager” or RPMI Railpen.

Others involved in our decision making

RPMI Railpen and the Trustee also work with Pension Committees, who provide additional oversight and help the investment specialists and Trustee to understand the member perspective.

The Railpen Investment Board oversees the management of funds by RPMI Railpen.  It includes two Trustee Directors, three non-executive directors and the Chief Executive of Railpen.

How and why we invest

Your pension contributions are combined into “pooled” or collective investment funds. This means your money immediately benefits from economies of scale and the financial experts can choose from a wider, more valuable range of investments.

Our investment team uses these funds to meet the specific needs of the three sections within the British Transport Police Force Superannuation Fund.

Rather than being held in cash savings, where inflation could reduce its value, investing gives your pension a better chance to grow, whilst also helping the organisations your funds are supporting. The idea is that as these organisations grow, so too does the value of your pension.

To guide all our decisions, we follow firm investment beliefs and principles on valuation, risk, diversification and costs, as well as environmental, social and governance factors.

We research our potential investments very carefully as we believe that sustainable, ethical businesses have sustainable futures. These are the companies that will survive and grow and we want your pension to grow with them.  Investing in this way can also make a difference on behalf of us all, to the future of the world.

Our investments are reviewed regularly to make sure they are still achieving goals on your behalf.

Here are some examples of where your pension is invested:

• In 2017 we invested in Gigaclear a company dedicated to building and operating ultrafast, pure fibre-to-the-premises broadband networks in rural Britain.

   

• In 2020 we purchased the majority interest in an onshore wind farm in Scotland, Carraig Gheal Wind Farm.  This investment is expected to generate renewable energy over the next 30 years and help the decarbonisation of the UK energy supply.

   

• In 2021, we invested in MIPS, a company that makes a patented Brain Protection System for helmets that mimics the brain’s own protection system, offering a scientifically-proven element and much better protection than current products.

   

• In 2020 we co-invested in Sleaford Renewable Energy Plant, a biomass facility in Lincolnshire.  The plant has been operational since 2014 and converts local straw into heat and energy, as a renewable source of power.

   

• In 2021, we invested in Lonza Group, a leading manufacturer of products and services to the biopharma and consumer health industries. Lonza offers direct exposure to the growth of tomorrow’s drugs. 

We have been paying your pensions securely, affordably and sustainably for over 50 years.  To achieve this, we continue to invest the Fund’s assets to generate strong investment returns over the long term.  You are in excellent hands.