Rachel Elwell
The Architect
Structured and legacy-driven; builds the systems and institutions that last.
Rachel Elwell emerges as a quintessential Architect, methodically constructing a regulated, at-scale investment institution from the ground up in Leeds while holding together 18 disparate partner funds with competing beliefs and risk appetites. Throughout this interview, Elwell describes deliberate system design at every layer: building in-house investment capability, creating governance structures, launching graduate and apprenticeship schemes, and engineering a holistic 2030 strategy. Her actuarial instincts reinforce this pattern, evidenced by her precise framing of buy-and-maintain versus low-turnover active credit, her insistence on understanding systemic risk over short-term benchmarks, and her structured approach to the insource-outsource decision. Elwell treats Border to Coast not merely as a fund manager but as institutional infrastructure for UK pension security, community investment, and domestic capital formation, building with long-term intent and clear purpose.
“The value from active management on fixed income comes from really understanding what are your risks when it goes wrong. We've had a very benign credit environment for several decades now and I think sometimes people forget that it's not a free lunch.”
“What's the cost of compromise? If partners come into that very fixed on what they already have and all of the detail of it, it's almost impossible to pool. So really working hard on how different are you to another partner if we put those things together, we can get these benefits of scale.”
“People think that cash is less risky, but it's not less risky when you've got high inflation. And people think that passive is less risky because you don't underperform a passive index. Whereas actually if what you're trying to do is manage long-term risk, passive can lead you down a much more risky route.”
Money Maze Podcast: “Scale, Strategy, and Stewardship: Rachel Elwell, CEO, on Border to Coast’s Growing Power in UK Pensions”
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