Experts from Imperial College London and the Pensions Management Institute will be looking for the best way to fund an ethical retirement

Experts will be looking for the best way to fund an ethical retirement, following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Imperial College London and the UK's Pensions Management Institute (PMI) last week.

Signing the MOU, (L-R) PMI President Susan Andrews, Minister for Pensions Steve Webb MP, Imperial's Professor Julia Buckingham

In a ceremony attended by the Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb MP, the two organisations agreed to work together to push forward sustainability-related research and training to the pension management industry. They will also investigate the concept of sustainable retirement in the hope of developing the first specialised pensions Master's degree in this field – an MSc covering Sustainable Retirement.

The partnership comes at a time when in the UK alone there will be nine million new entrants into pension schemes with at least 10% of the market wishing to secure pensions that reflect environmental and social sustainability. The partnership has been established alongside the government's new auto-enrolment policy which will see more than £8 million staff who are currently not saving into pensions through their employee, being automatically signed up to schemes. Its first step will be to design a degree curriculum in this field and look to developing mentoring and internship programmes in major pension management institutions.

The memorandum was signed by Professor Julia Buckingham, Pro Rector (Education and Academic Affairs) on behalf of the College, and by PMI's president Susan Andrews.

Dr Zen Makuch, Acting Director of Imperial’s Centre for Environmental Policy who leads the partnership for the College, said: "Environmental and social sustainability deliverables are the basis for a growing share of a £1 trillion investment market.  Imperial College London is well-placed to determine how best to address the technical basis for sustainability in this field."

Neil Scott, Head of Professional Standards at the PMI, said: "This partnership will look at new ways to offer an extended and more formalised career pathway that links vocational/professional qualifications with an academic benchmark that sets a new standard of achievement for the industry."

At the ceremony, Mr Webb said: "Sustainable pensions and ethical investments can only go up the agenda, but we need to understand more about what these look like and find out how to meet the demand as people start to ask for them even more. Pensions planning cannot be looked at in isolation. By studying pensions, you have to study the effect of just about everything, genetics, the science of aging, labour market trends, family formation and of course the global economy. Academic and industry partnerships such as this one can only improve our knowledge in this area