Investment guide - your pension pot

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 SAUL Start, the contributions you made were invested in a fund chosen for you.

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 to understand, and be comfortable with these risks you're taking before making any investment choices.

• Investments that can offer higher rewards often come with higher risks, which means there’s a greater chance of losing your money.
• With lower-risk investments there’s less chance of losing your money, but the rewards will usually be less.
• Past performance is not a guide to the future. The value of an investment is not guaranteed and can go down as well as up.

Understanding how you feel about investment risk

The way you feel about investment risk will depend on your situation and your personality. Your attitude to risk can change as you get older, so it’s important to regularly review how your pension savings are invested. 

The Investment Guide includes a step-by-step guide to help you understand all the things you should consider before making any investment decisions.

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

Investment Guide is a great place to start to understand the basics of investing – things like what funds are available, including the default investment option and lifestyle profile, how this works, 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 Environment, Social and Governance Hub. For information about SAUL’s approach to responsible investment, visit the Document library.