The UK’s £13bn pensions lifeboat, the Pensions Protection Fund, is proving to be the one to beat when it comes to Financial News’s investment strategy award, scooping the most votes in this category for the second year in a row.

This rapidly growing fund, which provides compensation to defined-benefit scheme members of companies that have gone bust, has seen assets swell at a rate of £2bn a year as more companies go to the wall. With bond yields at record lows, many pension funds come to the PPF with a sizeable black hole. Last year alone it inherited £1bn in deficits.