FAQs for Members

The government has announced that all auto enrolment pension schemes, including ours, must waive their flat fee administration charges for individual members who would have pensions savings of £100 or less in their pot after deduction of the fee. This is in line with pension legislation and aims to help prevent small amounts of pension savings (small pots) being eroded by charges.

We’ve been investing in green bonds – funding environmental and climate-positive projects like railways and wind farms – since 2017. We believe that responsible and sustainable investment is central to getting good investment returns over the long term.​

As a result of our 2023 investment review, we’re committed to increasing our investment in companies that have stronger sustainability characteristics and lower carbon footprints, as well as achieving good standards on:​​

• environmental factors such as carbon emissions and water management​
• social factors such as employee and local community relations, and​
• governance factors such as board diversity and remuneration.​

We’ve committed our investment portfolios to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with a 50% emissions reduction target by 2030, based on 2019 levels. This informs our investment decisions.​

You can find out more about this on our responsible and sustainable investment page.

Part of our approach to responsible investing is making investment decisions based on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, without impacting the growth of your pension savings. This means investing in companies that have stronger sustainability characteristics and lower carbon footprints. These companies also achieve good standards on:

• environmental factors such as carbon emissions and water management
• social factors such as employee and local community relations, and
• governance factors such as board diversity and remuneration.

Starting 10 years before your target retirement age – the age you’ve told us you want to retire at – we gradually switch most of your pension savings to our Retirement Countdown Fund. This fund aims to protect the value of your pension savings, reducing the risk of them falling in value when you’re due to turn them into retirement benefits.​

This is an investment approach known as lifestyling. It’s designed to:​

• grow your pension savings over most of your working life, then​
• protect the value of those built-up pension savings as you approach your planned retirement age.​ ​

We call this switch from growth to protection investments your ‘lifecycle’.​

The lifecycle is designed to protect your pension savings from ups and downs as you approach your planned retirement age. It’s automatic – you don’t have to make any decisions or take any action yourself. We move your savings gradually to protect against them all being moved if markets are low.​

The timing of the investment switching may not be appropriate if you want to take your benefits before or after your planned retirement age. So, it’s important that you keep us updated if your planned retirement date changes.​ Unless you tell us otherwise, we assume your planned retirement date is your State Pension age

We explain this in more detail in our Member Booklet. ​

You can find out more about our investment strategy in our Statement of Investment Principles.​

It normally takes one or two weeks depending on when we receive pension contributions from you and your employer.

Investment takes place on a Wednesday each week, with all contributions received between the Tuesday of the week before and the Monday of that week being invested.

There’s a one-day reconciliation period after the contribution has been received that causes the contributions received on the Tuesday in the week before to miss investment on the Wednesday of the week in which the contribution was received.

We receive the contributions from you and your employer and pass the money to our custodian, BNY Mellon, which holds it in a ring-fenced account on behalf of the now:pensions Trustee.

Your money is then invested in line with the investment manager’s instructions. Our investment manager is Cardano Risk Management Limited (CRML), a subsidiary of Cardano Holding Limited.

now:pensions is authorised and regulated as a master trust by The Pensions Regulator (TPR). We’re one of approximately 38 master trusts approved and supervised on an ongoing basis by TPR to maintain the quality of master trust providers in the UK. This means increased protection for members and their pension savings.

We employ a specialist custodian which is responsible for guarding and protecting your money. It holds your pension savings, and those of all members, under a custody agreement (which is protected by the law) until you ask for your benefits to be paid.

The money is kept in a ring-fenced account which is separate from now:pensions and the custodian’s own funds and company accounts. This means your benefits are protected if anything happens to NOW: Pensions Limited.

Our custodian, BNY Mellon, is one of the largest in the world. 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- for long-term deposits.

The value of your pension savings is linked to the value of the fund’s investments. These values can go up or down over time, and these changes in value are a normal part of saving for a pension. As you get closer to retirement we gradually move your pension savings into investments that don’t change in value much.

This is designed to help protect the value of your savings before you turn them into retirement benefits – so ups and downs in investment markets are likely to have less effect on the value of your pension savings at that stage.

Yes. Even if you’re a deferred member who’s stopped contributing to the Scheme, the following charges still apply. 

• Monthly administration charge. This is for running the Scheme. It costs £1.75 a month or £21 a year. But we won’t take the full administration charge if it would make the value of your pension savings lower than £100.
• Investment management charge. This is for investing the money in the Scheme. It costs 0.3% of the value of your pension savings every year.
• Transaction costs. These are for buying and selling investments. We don’t charge for them separately. We factor them into the returns on the Scheme’s investments.

You can see the combined effect of the monthly administration charge, investment management charge and transaction costs over time in our costs and charges booklet.

Our costs and charges apply whether you’re:

• currently paying in to your pension savings, or

• have stopped paying in but still have pension savings in the Scheme.

Even if you’re no longer paying in to your pension savings, we’re managing and investing them. So, the costs and charges still apply.

We believe splitting the charges in this way spreads the cost fairly across all members. It also makes it easier to understand what you’re paying for your pension every year.

The amount you pay for your pension matters a lot over a lifetime of saving. Download our costs and charges booklet for examples of the effect of costs and charges on the value of your pension savings over time.

No. If you leave your employer or stop contributing to your pension, you can transfer your pension savings out to another pension provider. We won’t charge you to transfer your pension savings out.

However, it’s possible the pension provider you’re transferring to will make a charge. You should check this.

If you’re leaving a small amount of savings in the Scheme – only a few hundred pounds, for example – it may be sensible to transfer your savings out, because the charges will continue to apply. If you don’t move your money, the charges could mean that your pension savings get smaller over time, as the total charges each year could be higher than the investment returns on your pension savings.

Costs and charges explained

The amount you pay for your pension matters a lot over a lifetime of saving. To help you understand pension charges, we’ve provided examples of how pension savings can be affected by the compound effects of costs and charges in our costs and charges leaflet. You can download a copy here.

No. You can transfer savings from other pension providers into your pension savings with us free of charge, as long as the Scheme can accept the pension you’re transferring in. See more on our Transfers FAQs section.

Yes. These charges are the same for all members, whether you’re:

• an active member contributing to your pension regularly, or
• a deferred member – you’ve stopped contributing but still have pension savings in the Scheme.

We send you an annual benefit statement that explains the value of your pension savings with us, including the costs and charges that apply. 

We’ve designed our charges – which are among the most cost-effective in the pensions industry – to be simple, transparent and fair.

Members of the now:pensions Trust (‘the Scheme’) pay three charges.

• Monthly administration charge. This is for running the Scheme. It costs you £1.75 a month or £21 a year. But we won’t take the full administration charge if it would make the value of your pension savings lower than £100.

• Investment management charge. This is for investing the money in the Scheme. It costs 0.3% of the value of your pension savings every year.

• Transaction costs. These are for buying and selling investments. We don’t charge for them separately. We factor them into the returns on the Scheme’s investments.

You can see the combined effect of the monthly administration charge, investment management charge, and transaction costs over time in our costs and charges booklet.

Our costs and charges apply whether you’re:

• currently paying in to your pension savings, or

• have stopped paying in but still have pension savings in the Scheme.

Even if you’re no longer paying in to your pension savings, we’re managing and investing them. So the costs and charges still apply.

We believe splitting the charges in this way spreads the cost fairly across all members. It also makes it easier to understand what you’re paying for your pension every year.

Monthly administration charge

This is the charge for running the Scheme. It costs you £1.75 each month (£21 a year), as long as the value of your pension savings is £100 or more.

Charging limit

We won’t take the full administration charge if it would make the value of your pension savings lower than £100. This helps prevent small amounts of pension savings being eaten away by administration fees. 

Investment management charge

This is for investing the money in the Scheme and costs 0.3% of the value of your pension savings each year. It’s one of the lowest charges in the industry.

Here’s an idea of how this works for different amounts of pension savings (the actual amounts depend on how the investments do).

The amount you pay for your pension matters a lot over a lifetime of saving. Download our costs and charges booklet for more examples of the effect of costs and charges on the value of your pension savings over time.

Yes. We’re formally authorised and regulated by The Pensions Regulator, having successfully gone through the master trust authorisation process in September 2019.

We’re one of approximately 38 master trusts approved and supervised on an ongoing basis by The Pensions Regulator to maintain the quality of master trust providers in the UK. This means increased protection for members and their pension savings. You can see a list of approved master trusts on their website.

Your fund value is updated each week, usually on a Friday or Saturday. Simply go to www.nowgatewayx.com and enter your now:pensions contract ID or your email address (if you registered one), plus your now:pensions password.​

Your fund value summary shows the current value of your pension savings. This is the total amount you and your employer have paid in, plus any change in the value of your investments, less any charges. It also shows any additional voluntary contributions you’ve paid and any other pensions you’ve transferred in.​

Yes. You can check the latest unit prices for our Diversified Growth Fund and our Retirement Countdown Fund here. You can also check historical fund fact sheets. See more on our Investment strategy page.