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Your investments

The money in your pension account is invested to help it grow. The performance of your investments ultimately affects how much money you’ll have in your pension account when you reach retirement.

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Your investment choices

There are two main ways to invest your pension account:

  • A lifestyle option, where everything is managed for you and tailored to your requirements automatically
  • Choose from the self-select range of funds to manage your investments yourself.

You can find out more in the Investment guide.

Read guide

If you don’t make an investment choice, we’ll automatically invest your pension account using the Scheme’s default lifestyle strategy.

Lifestyle options

What is lifestyling?

If you choose one of the Scheme’s lifestyle strategies, your investments are managed for you. Your money is invested in assets like equities when you’re a long way from retirement. Then, as you get closer to retirement, your money is automatically and gradually moved into lower-risk funds like bonds and cash (this is called de-risking). This helps protect the value of your savings from sudden changes in the financial markets when you’re approaching retirement.

The Scheme offers three lifestyle options:

  • Default lifestyle strategy – this is for you if you don’t want to make investment decisions, but you do want the flexibility to choose how to take your benefits when you retire.
  • Annuity lifestyle strategy – this is for you if you plan to use your pension account to buy an annuity (an insurance policy that pays you an income for life) when you retire.
  • Lump sum lifestyle strategy – this is for you if you plan to take your pension account as a cash lump sum when you retire.

Your target retirement age is important

The automatic de-risking of your investments is based on when you plan to retire, so choosing a target retirement age (TRA) is essential if you’re in one of the lifestyle options. If you don’t choose a TRA, it will automatically be set at age 65.

If you don’t intend to retire at 65, you can choose a different TRA. You can check your TRA at any time by logging in via My account and update it when your retirement plans change.

If your TRA is set later than you actually intend to retire, your pension account might be exposed to the ups and downs of the financial markets too close to your retirement. If there’s a sudden fall in the markets, your pension account might not have time to recover. Similarly, if you’ve chosen a TRA that’s earlier than when you intend to retire, your investments will start switching away from growth assets too soon, which means you might miss out on some investment growth.

Self-select funds

If you prefer to manage your own investments, the Scheme offers a range of funds to choose from. It’s important that you review your account regularly because, unlike in the lifestyle strategies, your money won’t be moved into lower-risk funds as you get closer to retirement.

You can view your current investments or make changes at any time by logging in via My account.