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Greater Manchester Pension Fund

Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF) is the largest LGPS in the UK. The Fund is managed by Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council and has over £30 billion in assets, more than 436,000 pension accounts and pays over £880 million of benefits each year.1

GMPF is one of the only pension funds to have an explicit allocation to local investment with the twin aims of generating a commercial return and delivering a positive local impact.

This has been a consistent part of their strategy for over 25 years. Its first impact investment was a £50 million allocation in 2014 to ‘Invest 4 Growth’, a collaborative project with several other local government pension funds to deliver commercial return and social, environmental and local economic benefits while benefiting from the participating funds’ collective economies of scale.

Local investing was originally defined as the Greater Manchester region, however, this has recently been extended to the North of England. This decision is partially to enable greater diversification but also to support collaboration and pooling arrangements with Merseyside and the other Northern Pool funds. The GMPF investment team have close working relations with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and have established a governance structure and capacity to make joint local investments.

Seeking to expand its local impact further, GMPF approved an allocation of up to 2% into a place-based Impact Portfolio in the early 2020s, outsourcing investment to third-party fund managers. The overarching impact themes of the portfolio are Jobs and Place, with a focus on SME financing, supported and affordable housing, and digital, social and clean energy infrastructure. The highly diversified multi-asset strategy aims to deploy in the region of £80 million per year into four or five funds with a minimum investment of £10 million. 

As at end-2024, invested capital stood at over £1.02bn, comprising £481m in GMPVF and £539m in the Impact Portfolio.2 The Good Economy, which has been engaged by GMPF to measure and evaluate the impact of both its Impact Portfolio and its Property Venture Fund, reported that in 2024 GMPF had:  

  • Helped to create 3,923 jobs through SME finance, 43% by businesses in the north-west 
  • Supported 15,303 jobs, with 38% of these jobs located in the local area 
  • Funded 3,752 new homes (covering completed, in development or planned homes), with 76% located in the north-west 
  • Supported 7 nurseries, 1 SEN school, and 1 primary healthcare facility with a capacity to serve 13,500 people. 3 

GMPF is the first pension fund in the country to attempt to quantify independently the place-based impact of its local investment portfolio. For this and other elements of its pioneering approach, it received the award for Impact Investing at the 2025 IPE European Pension Fund Awards, with judges commenting that: “GMPF excels in measurability, risk management, and in embracing impact investing with a clear theory of change, objectives, and economic measurement of outcomes”.4 

Sources:
1. Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF). (n.d.). Homepage. Retrived 4 March 2025
2. The Good Economy. (2025). GREATER MANCHESTER PENSION FUND ANNUAL ASSESSMENT OF THE PLACE-BASED IMPACT OF GMPF’S LOCAL INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO.
3. The Good Economy. (2025). GREATER MANCHESTER PENSION FUND ANNUAL ASSESSMENT OF THE PLACE-BASED IMPACT OF GMPF’S LOCAL INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO.
4. IPE Conference & Awards 2025. (n.d.). Themed Awards | Impact Investing: Greater Manchester Pension Fund – Impact Investing Winner. Retrived 4 March 2025