B&CE Benefit Schemes, the £1.5bn building-industry pension fund, and the retail-and-financial-services group the Co-operative were the winners of the headline categories at Financial News' inaugural Awards for Excellence in Institutional Pensions last night.

B&CE, a not-for-profit trust set up in 1942 to provide pensions and benefits to the building trade, was recognised by our 50 industry judges for its reinvention in the past year as a new, low-cost pensions provider open to all industries, with its People's Pension product.