Legal & General Retirement Institutional (“LGRI”) has announced plans to invest a further £2 billion of retirement funds into affordable housing over the next five years, helping to create more than 10,000 new homes nationwide.

The investment, through Legal & General’s wholly owned subsidiary, Legal & General Affordable Homes (“LGAH”), will help to tackle the huge shortage of affordable housing that currently exists – 1.2 million households are currently on social housing waiting lists in England.

The funding will be used to support further growing demand for homes both for social and affordable rent as well as providing a subsidised route to ownership through shared ownership.

The National Housing Federation and charity Crisis estimate that 145,000 new affordable homes need to be built every year to meet demand whilst barely a third of that figure, c.45,000 homes, were delivered in 2020/21.

Andrew Kail, Chief Executive Officer, Legal & General Retirement Institutional (LGRI):

“The UK has a huge shortage of affordable homes. Today’s announcement demonstrates how Legal & General Retirement Institutional, by putting inclusive capitalism at the centre of its investment focus, will help to address some of this problem.

“Legal & General is committed to building a better society for all by investing in useful and sustainable assets that will benefit both today’s society and future generations, whilst investing hard earned pension savings and securing the pensions of thousands of scheme members.”

In 2020 LGRI made a first £100 million funding commitment to affordable homes. In 2021, a further £270 million was committed to invest into 1,400 new affordable homes across the UK, to be delivered by 2024.

Today’s announcement follows LGRI’s previous announcement to target a further £2.5 billion of pension money into Build to Rent developments, creating over 7,000 new homes over the next five years.