The People’s Pension, Crawley, England, is taking steps to allocate up to £4 billion ($4.9 billion) to private markets assets by 2030, and also plans to hire a specialist and set up a dedicated research capability.

The defined contribution master trust had £31 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, and expects to reach £60 billion by 2033. This allocation will mark The People’s Pension’s first foray into private markets, as confirmed by a spokesperson for the fund.

While it did not commit to a target for investment in the U.K., The People’s Pension said it would invest in domestic projects as long as they meet return requirements, according to a news release.

Initial investments are set to focus on infrastructure and real estate, dependent on executives sourcing a pipeline of suitable projects.

“(The People’s Pension) has now reached the right scale for (private markets), so we can hold these assets in the optimal way, for example: direct deals, co-investments, funds,” Dan Mikulskis, chief investment officer of People’s Partnership, the provider of the master trust, said in a post on his LinkedIn page.

“A big issue over the last decade has been the availability of opportunities in the U.K. — it’s just been hard to deploy meaningful assets due to bottlenecks created by grid connections and planning. (There are) some signs these might change. We would like to look predominantly to the U.K. for these assets but if the right opportunities aren’t there we will go elsewhere,” he said.

The People’s Pension already invests 14% of its participants’ savings in U.K.-based assets via its growth stage default fund.

“Growing the economy is the number one mission of the (U.K.) government. This public commitment from one of the U.K.’s largest independent pension master trusts to invest here, at home in Britain, will help drive economic growth and support our milestone of improving living standards across the U.K.,” said Rachel Reeves, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the news release.

The People’s Pension’s first investment into private markets is expected in “the coming months” according to the release.

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