FOI reference - FOI-58
Date - 6 December 2022
Request
You have requested the following information:
Under the Freedom of Information Act, and in reference to paragraph 11 from this speech by Sarah Breedan, executive director of financial stability strategy and risk at the Bank of England, I would like to know the following:
- The number of active pooled liability-driven investment (LDI) funds and the number of all LDI funds.
- The number of pooled LDI funds that had to “rebalance their positions,” as Breedan said.
- Breedan mentions pooled LDI funds’ creditors would have been forced to sell collateral if they defaulted. How many pooled LDI funds were at risk of default?
I would like the data broken down from 28 September to 14 October, the duration of the Bank’s temporary gilt purchase programme.
Response
Following a search of our paper and electronic records, I have established that we do not hold the information you have requested.
Future plans for TPR
At the heart of our Corporate Strategy is a commitment to become a more digitally enabled and data-led organisation. We have created a new Digital, Data and Technology Directorate to help us to drive forward our agenda to be data led.
We believe we need to gather more granular information on pension scheme investments. While we need to take into account the costs and regulatory burden upon schemes of requesting more data, we consulted jointly with the PPF in 2021 on proposals to better capture data on investment risk through the annual DB scheme return without resulting in an excessive administrative burden on schemes. We are considering carefully whether to extend our annual DB scheme data return to include information on schemes’ leverage positions. As part of this process, we plan to increase the amount of information we gather on a range of asset allocations including LDI.
Advice and assistance
Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires a public authority to provide advice and assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect the authority to do so, to persons who propose to make, or have made, requests for information to it. The Financial Conduct Authority is the public body which also regulates pension providers, and your request might be better answered by their FoIA team. However, we cannot confirm if the FCA has the information you have requested.