Our investment strategy

When it comes to an investment strategy for your workplace pension scheme, we keep it simple. We have one robust, carefully-thought-out, investment strategy which aims to give positive outcomes over the long term.

This enables you to offer your employees an investment solution that is well designed, good value and managed by experienced professionals.

Our investment funds

Our investment strategy is designed using two investment funds, one targeting long-term growth and one aimed at protecting the value of built-up pension savings. Members’ pension savings are gradually switched from one to the other starting 15 years before their target retirement age.

Diversified Growth Fund (DGF)

The Diversified Growth Fund (DGF) targets stable long-term growth for Scheme members during most of their working lives. It does this using ‘diversification’ – a range of different types of investment.

We’ve set the DGF a higher target with the aim of increasing its growth potential by broadening our areas of investment.

Find out more about our Diversified Growth Fund (DGF).

Retirement Countdown Fund (RCF)

As Scheme members get closer to retirement most of their pension savings are gradually switched into the Retirement Countdown Fund (RCF). The RCF is designed to reduce the risk of built-up pension savings falling in value before they’re turned into retirement benefits. We call this switching period the ‘Journey Path’.

We’ve further reduced the risk by extending the Journey Path from 10 to 15 years.

Find out more about our Retirement Countdown Fund (RCF).

Investment management

Our independent board of trustees is responsible for deciding how to invest members’ pension savings.

They take advice from professional investment advisers and they delegate day-to-day management decisions to investment managers.

The trustee board regularly reviews the investment objectives and decides how best to achieve them.

The trustee board has appointed Redington as our investment advisers and Cardano Risk Management Limited (CRML) as our investment manager.

 

Men in a circle in the woods

Protection and safeguarding

We employ a custodian to protect the Scheme funds by holding them in a ring-fenced account, separate from both NOW: Pensions and the custodian’s own money.

Our custodian is BNY Mellon, one of the world’s largest custodians. It looks after over US$30 trillion on behalf of pension schemes and other investors.

It has strong credit ratings: for example, the credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s rates it AA (low) for long-term deposits.