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 the DC Investment Builder, the contributions you and your employer made were invested in a Legal & General Target Date Fund. 

This is called the default investment option. Unless you decide to put your savings in a different fund or funds, this is where your contributions will continue to go.

The Legal & General Target Date Funds allow you to match your investment strategy to a range of 'target dates'. This will normally include the date at which you currently plan to retire. Each Target Date Fund adjusts the way your savings are invested as you move closer to and then into retirement, giving you the flexibility to decide when and how you want to use your pension pot.

The idea is that you save in a single fund along with other people who have a similar target retirement date in mind. Each Target Date Fund invests in a wide range of assets such as company shares, government and corporate bonds, property, infrastructure and other investments. This means that you aren’t reliant on the performance of any one type of asset.

To find out more about this fund, please see your Guide to the Target Date Funds or The Target Date Funds video.

The Target Date Funds are a good starting point, but they may not suit your personal needs. Even if you’re choosing your own investments, think about whether your pension savings are invested in the best way for you.

To help you with this, there’s lots of information on this website, where we also provide links to other guides and resources. Below, we explain the importance of understanding investment risk, how to make your own investment choices and responsible investing.

We’re proud that our Target Date Funds incorporate responsible investing elements. This means we consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in our investment process and seek to drive positive change in the companies and assets invested in.

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 beliefs. Your attitude to risk can change as you get older, so it’s important to regularly review how your pension savings are invested. 

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

Understanding risk will help you to decide if you want to make your own investment choices or stay invested in the Target Date Fund, where your investment will be managed by us based on your retirement date.

Making your own investment choices

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

Our goal is to help people save for their retirement, creating brighter financial futures. We also want to help create the kind of world people want to retire in. Find out how considering environmental, social and governance issues in the investment process, and engaging with the companies we invest in, helps towards this goal. You can find out more on our Responsible investing page.

Find out more about investing by using the links below.