Top 10 most common requests

Any Tesco colleague can join the Tesco Retirement Savings Plan – no matter how old you are, how long you’ve worked here or how much you earn. There are two ways to join:

Automatically

If you’re aged between 22 and 75, you’ll automatically join the Tesco Retirement Savings Plan within three months of starting work. We’ll write to you to let you know when this will happen.

Apply to join

If you're not eligible to join automatically or you’d like to become a member straight away, then you can apply to join at any time by completing the Application To Join Form.

If you don't want to stay in the Plan once you've been automatically enrolled, you have one month to opt out and get back any payments you've made (if you're under 75).

You can do this online here. We'll send you a letter with details on when and how to do this, once you've been automatically enrolled. You'll need your enrolment code to opt out which you can find in your letter. If you wait longer than a month to leave the Plan, you won't be able to receive your money back until you retire.

The law requires us to enrol you back in to the Plan every so often, given certain conditions. We'll write to you if this applies to you. If you're 75 or over, you won’t be able to get any payments you've made if you opt out within a month, due to rules set out by the Government. However, you won't be automatically enrolled and you can join yourself if you'd like to be a member.

If you're already a member of the Tesco Retirement Savings Plan and you want to stop paying contributions, you can do so by telling us you want to stop your contributions.

If you stop contributing after the end of the one month opt out period, you'll have the following options:

Option 1 - Leave your savings where they are

Your savings will remain invested until you choose to take them (which can be at any time from age 55). You can continue to choose which funds to invest in, but you can’t pay any more contributions into the Tesco Retirement Savings Plan. If you choose this option, you can transfer your savings at a later date if you want to.

Option 2 - Transfer the value of your savings to another pension arrangement

You can choose to transfer your savings into a new employer’s pension scheme or to a personal pension plan if you have one. To arrange this, you should contact the scheme you wish to transfer into.

Option 3 – take your savings

If you’re 55 or over, you may be able to take your savings from the Plan.

In addition you’ll no longer receive the same level of live cover you get whilst you’re saving into the Plan. Instead of a cash lump sum worth 5 times your annual pay being provided if you die whilst working for Tesco, a cash lump sum of 1 times your annual pay would be provided.

If you choose to stop paying contributions and then change your mind later, you’ll be able to rejoin the Plan at any time. 

To make it simple for you, your savings are automatically invested in Tesco Lifestyle Cash Option which assumes you'll take your savings all as cash when you retire. If you want to stay in this option you don't have to do anything. But if you would like to change your investments you can do this: 

Through Manage Your Account.

By writing to
Tesco Retirement Savings Plan
Workplace Savings
PO Box 1560
PETERBOROUGH
PE1 9AP

Please make sure you include your full name, date of birth, National Insurance number, and Plan member number. You can find your membership number on your membership certificate, which you would have received when you first joined.

Or by calling 0345 070 0090 where you can switch over the phone or request a form.

When you join the Plan, your target retirement age is set at age 65.

It’s important this is right and realistic for you, as your investments in the default investment option – the Tesco Lifestyle Cash Option - will be set to target that retirement age. Also the information we send to you about how much you might have at retirement, might be less accurate if this is not up to date.

You can change your target retirement age at any time by calling 0345 070 0090 or through Manage Your Account.

The Planner on our colleague homepage can also help you choose the right target retirement age. It helps you see the impact that retiring earlier or later will have on the money you get.

If you die while still employed by Tesco, a lump sum will normally be paid to the person(s) you’ve nominated on your Expression of Wish Form. So it’s important that you’ve completed one and that it’s kept up to date. The Trustees don’t have to follow your wishes but they’ll always use it to guide their decision.

Although it can be paid in the form of a lump sum, the Trustees may choose to use part or all of the value of your savings to buy a regular income for one or more of your dependents. If any of your dependents are under 18 at the time of your death, the Trustees may pay the funds into a Trust for their benefit until they reach the age of 18. Please see the Member Guide for further details.

If you want to change the amount you save into the Plan you can do this online through our colleague homepage or by downloading and printing off a paper form. You can do this as many times as you like.

Remember, Tesco matches what you save when you pay between 4-7.5% of your salary. You can save more than 7.5% of you salary but Tesco will only match your contributions up to this amount.

If you need help or have any questions, call the Tesco Pensions Helpline on 0345 070 0090.

SMART is a way of paying towards your retirement savings through something called salary sacrifice – which means you pay less National Insurance, as well as saving on Income Tax.

If paying through SMART is right for you, we’ll automatically arrange this for you. If you do not want to pay contributions through SMART, you can opt out online or by completing the Opt Out of SMART form.

SMART may not be right for everybody though. If it is likely you’d be better off being opted-out of SMART, we will automatically opt you out and let you know we have done this.

Once you have started saving, you can check how much you’ve saved in the Tesco Retirement Savings Plan by logging on to Manage Your Account.

When you join the Tesco Retirement Savings Plan, once your first contributions have been paid, you’ll be sent log-in details which you’ll need to use to access Manage Your Account.

Your annual benefit statement shows you how much you’ve built up in the Plan; how your investments have done, plus an estimated forecast of how much you might get from the Plan at your target retirement age.

To find out more, call the Tesco Pensions Helpline on 0345 070 0090 (Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 7pm).

The helpline will not be open on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.