Today at the NEST Insight annual conference, Will Sandbrook, NEST Insight Director, announced a major strategic partnership with Vanguard. Building on its strong track record in corporate responsibility and research in investor behaviour and decision-making, Vanguard comes on board with a three-year partnership to support the NEST Insight programme of research, publications and events.

NEST has always been committed to sharing what it learns. It has set up the Insight unit to understand and help solve the challenges facing its members. As one of the world’s fastest-growing pension schemes, with over 5 million savers, it is building a rich store of data from which to generate insight about its members’ needs. NEST Insight works to ensure that these insights and data are available to the global academic, financial services and public policy communities.

Vanguard will support and help shape this important programme of work through sponsorship and the contribution of its deep industry expertise and insights and by helping the programme to reach a wider audience. Vanguard’s Center for Investment Research, which aims to improve investor outcomes through behavioural research and experimental intervention, will play a key role in this.

NEST Insight believes that working in partnership enables it to deliver a more comprehensive and impactful research agenda than would otherwise be possible.

Commenting on appointment of Vanguard as partner, Will Sandbrook, NEST Insight director, said:
“We’re thrilled to welcome Vanguard on board as the first strategic partner for NEST Insight. Vanguard is a global leader in the retirement and investment fields, with values very closely aligned to our own. We believe this partnership will be instrumental in helping NEST Insight to deliver our ground-breaking programme of research into how we can best serve the retirement needs of our members. This support helps us to ensure we can deliver NEST Insight’s ambitious programme while ring-fencing the work from NEST’s core job of delivering a high-quality, low-cost pension scheme.”

Gavin Lewis, head of retirement, Vanguard, said:
“We are proud to be partnering with NEST Insight. The UK public are faced with an increasingly complicated route to retirement. NEST Insight’s evidence based approach to improving the accessibility, transparency, and understanding of UK pensions will be vital in generating practical solutions to the challenges ahead. Vanguard was founded with the purpose of taking a stand for all investors, and treating them fairly. We look forward to working with NEST Insight, in pursuit of these principles, to help the UK public achieve the best chance of investment success, and a comfortable retirement.”

The NEST Insight conference brings together global leaders from academia, public policy and the retirement industry to consider the challenges facing low and moderate income people saving for retirement, and to look at practical solutions that could help. This year’s theme is ‘Beyond longevity’, focussing on the challenges and opportunities of increased longevity for those whose retirement income will depend on defined contribution pensions. Steve Utkus, Principal of Vanguard’s Center for Investor Research joins other speakers including Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and Brigitte Madrian, the Aetna Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management at the Harvard Kennedy School, to address these important questions.