Legal & General announces that it invested around £1.5bn in levelling up the UK’s towns and cities since the March 2020 lockdown, in turn creating over 30,000 jobs over the long-term and supporting a regional economic bounce back. Backing the delivery of around 2 million sq ft of much-needed real assets, these investments include science and innovation districts, clean energy infrastructure, and urban transformation projects.
7 Jan 2021
Despite uncertainty caused by the pandemic, Legal & General has also continued to back the creation of new housing to tackle the chronic undersupply. Since March, it has secured planning permission for around 6,000 homes through its later living, build to rent, modular housing and build to sell businesses. It also backed the creation of thousands of new affordable homes through long-term debt financing and its affordable housing arm. Its most recent housing commitment was agreed at the end of December 2020 in Bristol, where it secured consent to deliver 185 homes through modern methods of construction. The energy efficient scheme has been developed with Bristol City Council in Bonnington Walk, Lockleaze and will have half of its homes as dedicated affordable. As Legal & General continues to support a move towards a net zero carbon future, it has committed to make all its new housing stock operationally net zero carbon enabled by 2030.
Legal & General’s 2020 investments bring its support for a ‘levelling-up’ programme to over £26bn. A particular focus of its business model is to maximise the value of investments in order to create meaningful social and environmental impacts - using society’s capital for society’s benefit. Through its investments in later living housing this year alone, Legal & General has created around £4.3 million of saving for the NHS each year, whilst freeing up thousands of hospital beds. Legal & General has also continued to back growth companies through alternative credit and venture capital, whilst growing its capabilities across clean energy infrastructure to support regional economies in building back better.
Nigel Wilson, Chief Executive of Legal & General: "With UK unemployment likely to rise significantly over the next 12 months, it’s essential that financial institutions continue to invest in the real economy, recycling pensions funds and savings into projects that help to create jobs, housing and vital infrastructure. As a group, Legal & General is committed to supporting productive finance initiatives, in turn fast-tracking the UK’s economic recovery and providing positive, long-term outcomes for our investors.Through our group-wide commitment to inclusive capitalism, we are looking at how investment capital can not only create stable, long-term returns for our customers, but also to help to re-build regional economies in the wake of Covid-19 and limit the impacts of climate change. Our triangle of strategic challenges – climate, ageing and infrastructure – have all taken on a new urgency. We need to build back better, decarbonising our economies, creating a new intergenerational contract and sharing the benefits of a sustainable economy more fairly."
Lauren Kemp
Interim Group Head of Corporate Media & Issues
Group Communications
T: 07946 514 627
Established in 1836, Legal & General is one of the UK's leading financial services groups and a major global investor, with over £1.2 trillion in total assets under management* of which 39% is international. We have a unique and highly synergistic business model, which continues to drive strong returns. Legal & General provides powerful asset origination and management capabilities directly to clients, which also underpin our leading retirement and protection solutions. We are a leading international player in Pension Risk Transfer, in UK and US life insurance, and in UK workplace pensions and retirement income. Our purpose is to improve the lives of our customers and create value for our shareholders. Through inclusive capitalism, we are investing in long-term assets, such as real estate and infrastructure, that can help build a better society for the future.
*as at HY 2023
Legal & General Capital (LGC) is Legal & General Group’s alternative asset platform, creating assets for Legal & General Retirement and third-party clients in order to achieve improved risk-adjusted returns for our shareholders. LGC has built its capabilities in a range of alternative sectors, including in residential property; specialist commercial real estate; clean energy; alternative credit; and venture capital, which are all supported by long-term structural growth drivers, meet a financing gap and respond to a scarcity of supply that is underpinned by enduring societal needs.
Its purpose is to invest society’s capital for society’s benefit. Investing in the real economy and supporting the Group’s focus on climate and inclusive capitalism, LGC’s investments create jobs, change lives and contribute towards a net zero carbon future.
Legal & General has invested over £29bn in levelling-up regional economies, including through major UK-wide regeneration schemes and has recently made a commitment to enable all its new homes to operate at net zero carbon emissions from 2030.
*at 31 Jun 2021