Fall in bonds effect on "Lifestyling" pension pots

Albermarle

arnoldy said:

As 75-90% of people (both advised and non-advised) go into drawdown then surely the default choice should be stay invested not life styling. If we had a more effective regulator than the FCA then I would expect them to be all over this and prevent companies from moving clients into life styling in preparation for an annuity they are NOT going to buy. Head shaking stuff.

You are assuming that all lifestyling is geared to buying an annuity. In fact most pension providers now offer a variety of lifestyling options, and some ( not sure what % ) have made the drawdown lifestyling the default option.

So most new lifestyling will be geared to staying invested, although they usually do reduce the % equity gradually to a lower level.

The issue is more of an historical one with people in old lifestyling schemes that have not been converted over.

QrizB

Albermarle said:
The issue is more of an historical one with people in old lifestyling schemes that have not been converted over.

Which gets us back to the heart of the problem. Too many people don't pay any attention to their pensions, despite them potentially being the biggest asset they will ever own. More valuable than their house, their car, their savings.

There seems to be a belief that the defaults will suit every circumstance, that you can leave everything alone until you retire, then work out what to do with it then.

n58

First post, I have been lurking for a while, I remember I had a letter in 2018 from Royal London my current pension about lifstyling.

Seeing that I had only started this pension with my current employer in 2014, I had decided to call Royal London and tell them to keep my pension as is.

A couple of months ago, I have compared the pension growth on the Royal London app with a younger colleague and seen that his growth was at 3.8% while mine was at 0.1%.

I called Royal London and they checked and confirmed that they haden't done as instructed and carried on with lifestyling.

I have logged a complaint with them, they told me that they would revert back in five weeks and said that they needed more time to investigate.

Would I have been better off if they had followed my instruction and not lifstyled my pension?, the fund currently stand at just over £50,000 with 0% growth.

QrizB

n58 said:

Would I have been better off if they had followed my instruction and not lifstyled my pension?, the fund currently stand at just over £50,000 with 0% growth.

Impossible to say. We'll need to wait for their investigation.