Remember to take into account all the various types of risk that can influence investments and other factors such as any other sources of income you will have in your retirement.
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Investing matters
How you invest is important
Start by thinking about your own circumstances and your financial preferences:
The further you are from retiring, the longer you have for your investments to recover their value if they fall in the short term.
When you retire, you can use your pension account to buy your choice of retirement benefits. Make sure your investment choices match your plans.
You may wish to choose benefits, for example a pension, that allows you to provide for your spouse, dependants or registered civil partner, in case you die before them.
It's your choice
You can choose from 1 of 2 ways to invest, depending on what you want to do.
In this option, you decide which funds to invest in and it's up to you if and when you want to switch between funds throughout your career.
The Default Strategy invests your pension account for you by following a pre-set investment route that switches into different funds gradually over a number of phases. You can select this or it will be the option you are invested in if you make no other choices.
The Default Strategy
Through this option your investment funds are automatically selected throughout your career - but you can still tailor this approach to your specific needs in line with:
This strategy aims to maximise growth in your savings while you are young and provide protection as you approach retirement. You’ll be in the Initial Growth phase until age 40.
IMPORTANT: select a Target Retirement Age as this determines when this strategy starts to protect your savings. If you don't select one, this will be set at age 60.
Within the Default Strategy there are 4 different options to choose from for the final Retirement phase. This means that as you approach retirement, you are invested in a way which is in line with how you plan to access your savings, either as an annuity, through income drawdown or as cash.