As part of the government's growth agenda, the new chancellor and pensions minister are trying to find ways of diverting some of the £600bn in defined contribution pension funds into British assets - public and private - to get Britain moving again, with the capital injection it needs.
But while such a move might solve some of the chancellor's political objectives, in an economy that sorely needs investment, is it good for savers?
The recent call for evidence into the Pensions Investment Review, for both the Local Government Pension Scheme and workplace DC savings, asked the question of what were the potential and risks for savers and the British economy for increasing investment into "unlisted and listed equity, and infrastructure".
This follows the Mansion House Compact when the previous chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, signed up nine pension companies to allocate 5 per cent of default funds into unlisted equities by 2030.
He later issued a mandate for pension funds to disclose their allocation to British businesses, which many people took to include listed equities.
At the time, there was some resistance; the new government is consulting on this, and the resistance still remains.
The Association of British Insurers last week published their response to the call for evidence, saying: "In recent years savers have benefited from pension schemes reducing their exposure to UK equities.
"The case for requiring investment in certain assets is weak. It would undermine trustees' fiduciary duty and investors' commercial decisions, and potentially penalise savers for decisions that they have not themselves made."
According to think tank New Financial, British allocation by workplace DC schemes to UK listed equities is now 8 per cent, out of a total allocation to equities of 55 per cent..
Getting money into the UK
Mark Jaffrey, a partner at Hymans Robertson says: "The track record of UK pension schemes investing in UK listed equity is in a declining trend.
"They represent 5 per cent of the world market capitalisation, and most UK pension schemes will hold UK just as they hold France, Japan and America, of what the UK represents in terms of the world market.
"The main reason is that the UK listed market is essentially a small global market because the UK companies are global companies, and they don't really represent the UK economy. Why would we hold so much in UK listed healthcare companies and less in European healthcare companies when they all operate in a global market?
"The other reason is the UK listed market has underperformed overseas markets significantly. The UK has no real tech stocks; it's dominated by financial services, oil and energy companies, which from time to time do OK."
His suggestion, is to invest more money through small and medium sized companies: "We need to get money into the UK economy and the UK listed equity market is probably not the most obvious way of doing that."
A large part of the discussion relates to widening the scope of DC pension investing into private markets, which here means UK unlisted equities - at various stages of development - and infrastructure.
