A vehicle backed by Davidson Kempner Capital Management hired executives to help lead its push into the UK’s booming pension risk-transfer market, the latest example of alternative asset managers entering the sector.

The New York hedge fund’s Genwood unit this month appointed former Standard Life Plc executives Tom Ground and Kunal Sood as directors, filings show. Genwood was incorporated earlier this year and is expected to become a superfund platform, meaning it would take over pension plans from companies and back them with outside capital.

The move highlights how alternative asset managers are seeking new ways to get exposure to pension liabilities from UK employers in a market that has so far been dominated by life insurers. Last year, insurers backed by Brookfield Corp. and Apollo Global Management Inc. announced acquisitions valued at a combined $10.7 billion to enter the sector.

Genwood has yet to set out its plans publicly and does not yet appear on the Pension Regulator’s list of assessed superfunds. A representative for Davidson Kempner declined to comment.

Also looking to take over UK pensions is Orca, a superfund consolidator founded by former insurance executives James Pearce and Robin Spencer. The business, which is co-chaired by former UK pensions minister Guy Opperman, is looking for investors and aims to be fully operational in the second half of this year, according to a prospectus seen by Bloomberg News. Representatives for Orca didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Both insurers and asset managers are looking to scoop up the UK’s small but increasingly well funded defined-benefit pensions in a consolidation wave supported by the government. While defined-benefit pensions are no longer offered at most companies, there are millions of members with ongoing or future rights to payments, funded by investments that enjoyed a boost from rising interest rates in recent years.

Both insurers and superfund platforms bet they can earn more from investing the schemes’ assets than it costs to pay members’ pensions, and provide the capital needed to back those promises.

Executives at superfunds have estimated their proposition could eventually take over £500 billion of more than £1 trillion in liabilities sitting in the UK’s corporate defined-benefit pension plans.

Workplace pension provider TPT Retirement Solutions said earlier this month that it had cleared the Pension Regulator’s assessment process and secured enough capital for an initial £1 billion to £1.5 billion of transactions.

Clara Pensions, which is owned by private capital manager Sixth Street, was the first superfund to complete the regulator’s assessment in 2021. Since then, the fund has completed seven transactions covering more than 23,500 members and £1.6 billion of assets.

Asset managers are also exploring so-called sponsor swaps as an alternative to bulk-purchase annuities.

Under that model, a third party replaces the original company as sponsor, assumes responsibility for funding the pensions and typically manages the assets, while the pension plan runs on as standalone entity. Scottish money manager Aberdeen Group Plc used the structure last year to take over sponsorship of the £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) pension for transport company Stagecoach.

Other British pension plans have recently invited pitches from asset managers for similar transactions, according to people familiar with the matter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s asset management arm and Nuveen-owned Schroders are among firms examining such transactions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing non-public information.

Sponsor swaps are “an area that Schroders has been actively working with corporate sponsors and trustees drawing on our investment capabilities in this space and the experience of Schroders’ own pension scheme, which is running-on for surplus sharing,” a company spokesperson said. A representative for Goldman Sachs declined to comment.