It’s an important story if Editor John Greenwood puts his name to it.
It was published on a Friday and so has had very little comment on it from a pension press (as yet) but I suspect it will have. It’s the top read article on CA over the weekend and it looks like sparking a lot of speculation on other non-insurance backed master trusts struggling to get to Scale. Scale is £25bn by 2035 and a credible plan to get from at least £10bn to £25bn in 2030.
NatWest won’t be the first UK retail bank to put a good idea up for sale after failing to get traction. HSBC cancelled its master trust before it had taken any money (but after making a lot of noise). Lloyds have a master trust with Scottish Widows but it has hardly caught light having only a handful of employers. Lloyds are looking to bolster assets at SWMT with the staff DC scheme which it hopes to get agreement on later this year (which will take SWMT to £10bn).
Source GO Pensions https://henrytapper.com/2025/09/20/go-pensions-give-us-more-information-to-make-vfm-decisions/
Despite having over 20,000 employers on its book, Cushon has less than Scottish Widows’ in funds under management and both have been hit by a VFM model based on cost and not value. If you are competing for business on price there is little margin if you charge a premium to the basement, you need to have a track record. There are no banking master trusts with a long enough track records to give them a VFM gong on that basis too. You can read the definitive report on master trust and GPP defaults from CA (just published) here.
Barclays has not tried to compete with the insurers, consultants, Nest and People’s who own the market. It has not proved possible to promote pensions to banking clients to date and it looks as if NatWest’s trial with Cushon has not survived the change of senior management at the bank.
The same numbers, only the listing is by funds under management this time.
Cushon is a well run pension that has swallowed many smaller plans to get where it is. But it is now improved in value as a means for whom funds under management (FUM) needs a boost to get the master trust to scale by 2030 and 2035
It had been Corporate Adviser’s urgent question to Cushon in May and I’d been told by CEO at the time that Cushon was relying on consolidation to them. Now it looks like it’s the other way round with Cushon being consolidated.
Here’s a report on NatWest Cushon in Corporate Adviser May 29th.
NatWest Cushon CEO Ben Pollard says the business plans to grow through a mix of organic expansion and acquisitions. He highlights NatWest’s access to over 1.3 million UK businesses and strong partnerships with employee benefit consultants as key channels for growth.
Pollard points to the company’s 2021 acquisition of the Workers Pension Trust and the first-ever merger of two master trusts as examples of its commitment to industry consolidation.
What a difference a summer makes.
Sky news
It’s actually a story that broke with Sky earlier last Friday
Cushon is a master trust and not much more
NatWest’s acquisition of the business was aimed at diversifying its non-interest income by offering Cushon’s products to the bank’s commercial and business banking customers.
Cushon offers workplace pension products as well as a range of workplace ISAs, including Junior ISAs, Lifetime ISAs and General Investment Accounts.
Its master trust offering has close to £3bn of assets under management and administration, with £17.4m in revenue generated from this area last year – 97% of Cushon’s total revenues.
But with that many employers and above or below £3bn (depending on whether you use Go Pensions or Sky’s) it will be interesting to see if NatWest will retrieve the £144bn they paid out three years ago.
