Latest news

There are important changes to the Fund’s Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVC) arrangements being made from January 2023. These changes are applicable if you have paid or are currently paying using the current arrangement with Aviva (previously Friends Provident/Friends Life) or Utmost Life (formerly Equitable Life).

The Avon Pension Fund is pleased to publish both its latest Responsible Investment Annual Report and Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) Report for 2022.

This year’s Responsible Investment Annual Report serves to update stakeholders on the progress we have made against our climate objectives. This report offers insight into the structural challenges climate-aware investors face and provides details of the Fund’s focus over the coming year as we seek to deliver on our financial and environmental, social and governance (ESG) obligations.

The Local Government Pension Scheme Regulations 2013 require an administering authority to publish a pension fund annual report on or before 1st December following the Scheme year end. This annual report should contain an external auditor’s opinion on the pension fund’s statement of accounts, which is a ‘consistent with’ opinion referring to that given on the administering authority’s statement of accounts.

To coincide with COP27’s Finance Day, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) published their inaugural Paris Aligned Asset Owners (PAAO) progress report. The report, which includes 29 case studies, shows how asset owners are developing a range of strategies and approaches to fulfil the criteria set by the PAAO 10-point commitment (which is set out in the report).

The Avon Pension Fund is in the process of moving to a new AVC provider.

Aviva, our current AVC provider, will no longer accept new employer applications and we are therefore in the process of appointing a new AVC provider.

From 1 October 2022, we will temporarily suspend new applications to any of the existing Aviva AVC schemes. As soon as we have appointed a new provider, new AVC applications will commence again with the new provider. This is likely to be from December. Deductions in respect of existing AVC contracts with Aviva will continue during this interim period.

In April, Avon Pension Fund signed the 2022 annual ‘Global Investor Statement to Governments on the Climate Crisis’, alongside over 500 other investors managing nearly $39 trillion in AUM. This statement was made public on the IIGCC IIGCC website yesterday, ahead of COP27 in Egypt in November.

We’re pleased to sign The Pension Regulator’s pledge to combat pension scams and protect our members.

Pension scammers wreck lives and anyone can be a victim. As part of the pensions industry, we play a vital role in protecting members and helping to fight the scammers.

We're pleased to bring you our Statement of Compliance with the UK Stewardship Code covering the year 2020 to 31 March 2021. 

Councillor Paul Crossley, Chair of the Pension Committee, said this in recognition of this latest release:

We’re pleased to bring you our Annual Engagement Highlights for 2021, carried out by EOS Federated Hermes on behalf of Avon Pension Fund. The report outlines our engagement and voting ESG activity for 2021. 

At the end of 2021 we published our very first Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) report. Today, we’re pleased to publish our Climate Action Plan – outlining the four key pillars of disclosure taken from that report that will help us reach our goal of becoming a net-zero investor by 2050 or earlier.

Following the disclosures set out by the TCFD is not yet compulsory for LGPS funds, so we are proud to be blazing the trail in this way.