Fund managers hoping the stampede toward passive might turn out to be a temporary phenomenon have some bad news coming – index funds are being baked in to the pension schemes of a whole new generation of UK savers.

That’s the finding of a major new research project, the first to examine in detail the investment strategies of the UK’s new master trust pension funds, which were set up to take in 10 million new savers under the government’s auto-enrolment programme, from 2011 onwards.