UK finance chiefs are banging the drum for one major reform to boost economic growth

Liverpool, ENGLAND — U.K. finance chiefs are banging the drum for pension reforms to boost anaemic investment and growth in the country.

The annual Labour conference — the centre-left party's first in power for 15 years — was awash with delegates from the City of London urging the government to move decisively with plans to make retirement schemes more competitive.

William Vereker, chairman of Santander U.K., cited pension reform as one of three paths to economic growth, alongside skills and education, and regulation.

"We are almost wholly reliant for investment in this country at the moment, on the kindness of strangers. We're reliant on external companies, external investors and so on, to invest in our stock markets, invest in our businesses, and that just isn't sustainable," Vereker told a room full of industry figures on Monday.

"If we do not have domestic capital investing in domestic businesses, we will not see the growth that this government is so rightly focused on," he added.

BlackRock's vice president of government affairs and public policy, Muirinn O'Neill, said the new government had a "once-in-a-generation" chance to overhaul the pensions system.

"In terms of the growth agenda, we have been long-term champions of getting more DC investment into private markets," she said Tuesday, referring to defined contributions, which are retirement plansbased on money paid in as opposed to money earned.

The comments echo those from Citi U.K. CEO Tiina Lee, who told CNBC last week that domestic funds have for too long focused on low-risk and low fee investments, leading to "sub-optimal" returns.

"For me, pension reform is the way to unlock growth in the U.K.," Lee told "Squawk Box Europe."

"When one thinks about the amount of