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When you put money into your pension, we invest it in company shares (among other places) with the aim of helping your savings grow.

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to investing your money into a pension. And it can all seem a bit daunting if you’re new to investing or haven’t had a pension plan before.

What happens to the money I pay in?

When you first joined the pension plan, the contributions that you and your employer made were invested in a fund or a lifestyle profile chosen for you. This is called the default investment option and, unless you decide to make your own investment choices, this is where your contributions will continue to be invested.

Although it’s considered a good starting point for most people, it doesn’t take into account your personal circumstances. Even if you’ve already started choosing your own investments, it’s worth considering whether your pension savings are invested in a way that is right for you.

Balancing risk and reward

All investment involves a degree of risk. It’s important that you understand and are comfortable with the risks you're taking before making any investment choices.

Investments that offer the potential for higher rewards often come with higher risks, which means there’s a greater chance of losing your money.

With lower-risk investments there is less chance of losing your money, but the potential for reward will usually be less.

Understanding how you feel about investment risk

The way you feel about investment risk will depend on your circumstances and, often, your personality. It’s not unusual for someone’s attitude to risk to change as they get older so it’s important to regularly review how your pension savings are invested. 

Our guide to risk and reward will help you understand how you feel about investment risk and how you might identify with one of our five customer risk profiles.

Understanding how you feel about risk will help you to decide whether you’re comfortable making your own investment choices. 

Making your own investment choices

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to making your own investment decisions. 

Your guide to investing is a great place to start to understand the basics of investing – things like what funds and lifestyle profile are, how they work, and the type of assets they invest in. Your guide to how your funds are managed explains the key principles we follow when managing our funds and what happens when an unexpected event occurs.

Responsible investing

As well as caring about your financial future we believe that we have a responsibility to consider the impact that the companies that we invest in have on the world around us. The money we manage for you and for millions of other savers means that we can influence some of the world’s largest companies. If a company isn’t changing the way they work, we’ll work with them to help them make change.

You can find out more about how the money from your pension is invested to make a difference on our Responsible investing page.

Find out more about investing by using the links below.