Moving my Pension: should I?

norainbows

I have been sent the following information about my pension. See pic. 
I'm not pension savvy so do not know whether I should leave it where it is, or move it to one of the other options offered. 

Can anyone advise me please.

Marcon

Without knowing anything about you, your objectives, attitude to risk, what new funds are on offer etc it's impossible to comment helpfully. In particular, are you invested in any of the funds listed above, or has your target retirement date passed?

If you've not yet done so, visiting the dedicated website mentioned in the text sounds a good idea - you can then read the information there which should enable you to take a better informed decision on whether or not you need to take any action.

gm0

This seems to be an "all hands" pension comms. 

Which is telling members that the "default" funds are changing to the L&G Target Retirement date version.   And encouraging members to find credentials access the site and review their investments.  All very normal behaviour for a pensions admin.

This is fairly common for schemes which use L&G for admin and L&G (LGIM) as a fund manager.   There are target retirement date funds which "lifestyle" - derisk approaching retirement date - altering the mix of equities and bonds away from equities. 
If you go and look at the site and a fact sheet for the fund you will see how that works. 

If you want your pension fund to do that while you sleep and don't think about it.  It may be just fine.

The dated version you are in will be deterimined by your retirement date as held by the scheme.  And they will put people who join and don't choose their own investments in one of these from now on.  And report back on it etc.

But you have a small fund selection to choose from and can "bespoke" a fixed choice of fund or funds to save in which will "not derisk" i.e. won't change as you approach retirement until you actively go and do it yourself.   Which was the choice I made to "opt out" of the auto bond switching funds until I was ready to act.

Nobody can tell you a priori which call will be right on asset returns for some future decade when this happens for you.

The key issue for you to evaluate is your objectives and time to retirement.   In the olden days before pension freedoms - derisking growth assets like equities prevented the "buying an annuity on a fixed date - which turned out to be the day after the 60% crash problem".  Hence the invention of progressive derisking/aka lifestyling funds.  Which addressed this short term volatility destroys or delays retirement issue

With drawdown opinions vary widely on how much you should derisk and how many years before taking pension out.   Clearly you could be in drawdown for 40 years and will remain invested.  How aggressively is a choice for then.  For many it might well be less aggressive than age 25 or 30 when saving up with a long working life ahead. And for others (more aggressive) in investments it might be the same as before during accumulation.

They are asking you to access the site and take control of what you are invested in or to go to a default.  The generic letter (to suit all members) is a bit unhelpful as it doesn't take account of what you have already done/invested in.  It's not personalised.

The letter doesn't describe your full list of funds but something is clearly changing given the letter text.  Best take a look.