Nest Pension - is this low value pot?

tgroom57

My daughter has been contributing £75 a month from her earnings into a Nest Pension, since April 2013 (ie more than 6 years). She says the "pot value" is currently £2,787.

Even allowing for her slightly lower income in previous years, this looks to be about half what she's paid in. Not taking account of the bit her employer pays in, or the taxman pays in. I am aghast, quite frankly.

Might a Standard Life Stakeholder pension be better?

triplea35

Not an expert, and just speaking as a father who takes an interest in his son's Nest Pension.

If your daughter knows her pension pot value, presumably she can log in to her Nest account and see all contributions that have been made from when the account was set up. She should also be able to see which default retirement date fund she was put in, and with a little searching can find how that particular fund has performed.

I have just looked at five of the most recent, longest dated funds (2055 to 2059) in April 2013, and compared with August 2019 the unit prices have all increased around 50% over the period.
Difficult to see how your daughter could have lost so much over the period.

The default fund has a 5 year Foundation Phase, where the investments are very very cautious to minimise risk of loss. I did hear that the reason behind that is that most new account holders are new to pensions and they do want them to be put off by losses.
After 5 years the fund goes into a growth stage, which is still relatively low risk, and then the final ten years, a consolidation phase, where the risk is again reduced significantly, although I understand you can choose to opt out of this phase now
Personally I didn't like the sound of the Foundation phase, so after discussion with son we switched to another Fund. There is a limited choice, Higher Risk and Sharia, which are clearly higher risk but have significantly out performed the dated retirement funds.

tgroom57

triplea35 wrote: »

Difficult to see how your daughter could have lost so much over the period.

My thoughts exactly.

JoeCrystal

tgroom57 wrote: »

My thoughts exactly.

As triplea35 pointed out, this doesn't make any sense. Have your daughter checked that all contributions from her payslip went into her fund? It seems unlikely for your daughter to be down 50%!

This subforum is a bit of a ghost town. It might be worth reposting this topic on the main Pensions, Annuities & Retirement Planning forum so more people may be able to help you.

xylophone

https://www.nestpensions.org.uk/schemeweb/NestWeb/faces/public/MUA/pages/loginPage.xhtml

Has she logged in and checked her account?

jamesd

Two things to check:

1. is "pot value" the actual balance now or is it the projected annual income?
2. if it's the current balance it's too low, so check that all of the monthly payments into the account have been made.

tgroom57

;I'm planning to check it myself tonight.

Afraid_of_Kittens

Ive put my NEST pot into the Sharia fund rather than the default fund.
These are the performance figures for the various funds:-

https://www.trustnet.com/fund/price-performance/p/pension-funds?manager=NETF&tab=fundOverview&pageSize=25

No fund has dereased in value by 50%.

Her online NEST account will have annual statements of employer and employee contributions and growth per year.

loulou41

tgroom57 wrote: »

My daughter has been contributing £75 a month from her earnings into a Nest Pension, since April 2013 (ie more than 6 years). She says the "pot value" is currently £2,787.

Even allowing for her slightly lower income in previous years, this looks to be about half what she's paid in. Not taking account of the bit her employer pays in, or the taxman pays in. I am aghast, quite frankly.

Might a Standard Life Stakeholder pension be better?

Reading your post my son has been contributing since 2013 as well. Have noticed his pot value is less than £3000. Wil ask him to check his account online. Thanks

george4064

Afraid_of_Kittens wrote: »

Ive put my NEST pot into the Sharia fund rather than the default fund.
These are the performance figures for the various funds:-

https://www.trustnet.com/fund/price-performance/p/pension-funds?manager=NETF&tab=fundOverview&pageSize=25

No fund has dereased in value by 50%.

Her online NEST account will have annual statements of employer and employee contributions and growth per year.

I hope you realise you are taking a lot of unnecessary risk here, remember that past performance should not be treated as an indication of future performance.

The Sharia Fund is very concentrated to the US (70%) and the tech sector (40%), but I guess you're already aware of this right?

Afraid_of_Kittens

george4064 wrote: »

I hope you realise you are taking a lot of unnecessary risk here, remember that past performance should not be treated as an indication of future performance.

The Sharia Fund is very concentrated to the US (70%) and the tech sector (40%), but I guess you're already aware of this right?

Well aware. I have 3 Local Government pensions - 2 that I will receive at 60 with a nice lump sum. I can afford the gamble of putting my NEST pension in the Sharia fund. A massive gamble. If it pays off I will be very happy. If it doesnt I still have my other pensions.