The Reshaping of the UK MSP Market
For the past two to three decades, Management Services Providers (MSPs) have been able to rely on a steady stream of revenues through operational PFI projects. Responsible for overseeing day-to-day contract management of infrastructure projects on behalf of SPVs, the decline in the number of operating PFIs as a result of expiries will see them face a sharp contraction in their addressable market. Annual payments to PFI Project Companies peaked at £10.69 billion in FY2025, and will decline steadily from this point onwards as the rate of expiries picks up over the next decade.
However, the expiry wave will not arrive evenly; both the rate and scale of decline varies rapidly between the eight largest MSPs in the UK. Using the recently published 2025 NISTA data-set, we have used an API with Companies House to link each PFI Project Company to its MSP across all 654 active projects. The result is a level of detail that does not exist in the original public data. We have also applied Curshaw’s Inherent Risk Rating at a project level, and modelled assumed and indicative revenues of each project through to FY2050.
The 654 active PFI projects have approximately £117 billion of Unitary Charge Payments (UCP) still to be paid out from FY27 onwards. At a 5% MSP fee assumption, that is an addressable MSP fee pool of around £5.85 billion over the remaining life of operational PFIs.
Compared to other MSPs, Vercity clearly has the highest market share due to its involvement in major health projects. Equitix Management Services (EMS), meanwhile, has the highest number of projects, but a lower overall value per project.
The market is shrinking
Of the 654 active PFI projects, 152 will expire by the end of FY30, leading to a decreased MSP fee pool. The charts below illustrate the extent of this decline in five-year increments, with each pie being proportionate to the first. Comparing the FY27 to FY31 period against the FY32 to FY36 period, total MSP revenues drop by 20.5%. The period after that sees a further 41% decline. By the time the FY42 to FY46 window arrives, the market is essentially down to a handful of long-dated hospital contracts and a residual tail of payments.
MSP Market Share
Projected revenue by five-year period · values in £m · pie area scales with total market size
Hover over a slice for detail · use the buttons to select time period
The decline is relatively front-loaded, with roughly half of the portfolio expiring between 2032 and 2037. The drop-off in revenues is likewise steep, as most remaining UCP will be paid out by 2033.
This revenue chart further demonstrates that the MSP market is not only declining, but declining unevenly between MSPs. Meanwhile, Vercity’s involvement on major hospital projects, overseeing the longest-lasting PFIs, some lasting throughout the 2040s, explains why their share of total UCP will grow from 15% in 2026 to 55% in 2041, even as the market value shrinks by 79% during this period.
Estimated Annual Revenue to MSP
By financial year · click a legend entry to mute/show · Values in £100k
A shrinking market could lead to more aggressive competition
By the end of FY31, the number of operational PFIs will have fallen considerably.
Semperian and IML are facing a near-term cliff, with both seeing more than a third of their current project count expire within five years. Albany, in contrast, has the longest-dated book of any of the eight, and is barely touched over the same five year period. Vercity is insulated by its concentration in long-dated hospital contracts that run into the mid-2040s.
The lack of new PFI contracts means that the shape of the future market is already locked in by the maturity profile of today's contracts - these figures assume that contracts do not switch hands between MSPs before expiring.
The MSP market has not, historically, been highly competitive, as there has been limited incentives to aggressively bid and take over other contracts, but with the decline in volume and value of work it is possible that MSPs will be faced with stranded labour unless staff losses through attrition are not managed in lockstep. Faced with the risk of stranded labour and a shrinking market it is possible that there will be MSP consolidation or increased market competition.
Risk aligns with reward
Our Inherent Risk rating assigns a score to each project based on an array of factors, such as operational complexity, project type, sector, and more - a major hospital project (more typical for Vercity), on average, bears much higher risk than a street lighting project (more typical for EMS). You can read more about the methodology here. In completing this analysis, we have rated the Inherent Risk as at the end of 2025.
The riskiest projects are also the largest and the longest-dated. They are also unevenly distributed across MSPs. Acute hospital PFIs sit at the top of the risk distribution. They are operationally complex and demanding, frequently now used beyond their envisaged capacity, and expensive, while also having the highest capital value and UC.
Hospitals and acute health alone account for 43% of all remaining UCP. Plotting each MSP by average risk rating against total remaining UCP illustrates this trend clearly. The firms holding the projects we consider to be the most inherently risky also hold the largest residual market. Amber, IML and Pario sit at the lower end on both axes, with shorter-dated books with Projects are inherently less risky - dominated by schools, BSF programmes and street lighting.
Meanwhile, Vercity sits in the top right of the chart, with the highest average risk rating and the largest UCP pool, due to their involvement in long complex hospital contracts.
Inherent Project Risk and Revenue
Bubble sizes proportional to number of projects · hover for detail
What this means for PFI handback
With respect to handback in the near-term, Semperian, IML, and EMS together account for the largest block of contracts expiring by 2032. A revenue cliff combined with concentrated handback execution risk, all inside a five-year window, is not a position the wider sector has had to manage at scale.
Additionally, the toughest handbacks are still to come as acute hospital contracts carry the most demanding handback obligations. They are concentrated in Vercity's portfolio, and they predominantly expire in the 2030s and 2040s. The complexity of those handbacks, and the capability required to deliver them, has barely been tested yet.
Furthermore, for procuring authorities, handback capacity needs to be sequenced against the expiry wave rather than built generically. The sectors and the MSPs facing handback in the late 2020s are not the same sectors and MSPs facing handback in the late 2030s. Treating handback as a single problem with a single solution and all projects as being equally challenging will not work.
Conclusion
In the next 5 years, as a result of the handback wave and the moratorium on PFI in 2018, the MSP market will change profoundly. This will have implications for the MSPs and those who rely on them, both SPVs and contracting authorities, and may present uncertainty for a workforce that has been responsible for managing state critical infrastructure and supply chains with pride for years and years. It is unclear how this human capital will be managed and how organisations will rightsize to reflect the changing value of the market. Much will depend on TUPE and the post-PFI operating models designed and procured by contracting authorities. This makes it ever so important for joint handback planning to happen as early as possible and as part of that, for parties to consider key-personnel risk and the labour loading of both the handback work and the post-PFI target operating model.
Amidst this change there may be increased competition amongst MSPs and potentially market consolidation. If this does not happen and there is no change, Vercity become the only MSP in town as a result of their involvement in more Projects that are handed back later. The assets handed back later are generally health assets - the sub-sector that is currently most challenged. It is essential that whichever MSP is responsible for managing these and handing them back is suitably equipped given the scale and complexity of the assets and also has a delivery model that facilitates the efficient, effective and equitable handback the industry needs whilst managing the risk of stranded labour given there may be no or limited social infrastructure PPPs in the future.
Contact us on hello@curshaw.com if you would like to talk about these challenges and how to prepare for and overcome them.
Notes on the data
Our analysis maps 76% of the 654 active PFI projects to an MSP (68% to one of the main 8 MSPs, and 8% to 11 smaller participants). The remaining 24% sit in an unattributed bucket. Some of these may belong to one of the eight. Others are managed by smaller or in-house arrangements. The shares quoted above are therefore conservative for the named MSPs.
The 5% MSP fee assumption is also a flat proxy. Fees vary by sector, contract complexity, and the bundle of services provided. Refinement here may improve the accuracy of figures, but would be unlikely to change our conclusions.