A UK investment firm has pioneered a new route for hedge funds and other alternative managers to win business from defined contribution pension schemes, one of the only expanding parts of the pensions industry.

Oxip, an investment firm set up in 2005 to manage assets for a group of Oxford colleges, has taken a fund structure originally designed for funds sold to retail investors - a "non-Ucits retail scheme operating as a fund of alternative investment funds", or "Nurs Faif" - and applied it to a fund that it has begun selling to DC pension schemes.