Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) has been selected to manage $40bn of Shell’s pension assets, marking one of the largest recent mandates in the European pensions industry, according to a report by the Financial Times.

The agreement will see GSAM oversee portions of Shell’s European pension funds and provide advisory services to North American schemes.

The deal highlights the growing momentum behind outsourced pension management. Such arrangements allow schemes to delegate investment decisions to large asset managers with diversified expertise, often providing access to alternatives. GSAM has emerged as a leading beneficiary of the trend, with $450bn of its $3tn in assets under management coming from these mandates.

“The reasons why pension plans outsource vary,” said Chloe Kipling, co-head of GSAM’s EMEA institutional client coverage. “It can happen when a chief investment officer steps down, when a fund changes strategy, or when smaller schemes want broader access to asset classes.”

Globally, outsourced pension management reached $4.79tn in 2024 and is projected to rise to $7.3tn by 2029, according to Chestnut Advisory Group.

Shell confirmed that it helped coordinate the process but was not directly involved in the decision to appoint Goldman Sachs.

While some industry experts caution that outsourcing does not automatically lead to better performance, the Shell mandate underscores the increasing reliance on global asset managers to run complex retirement portfolios.

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