Introduction: Three Steps To A More Secure Retirement

No matter who you are, no matter what your definition of financial well-being, participating in this scheme is your most direct route to retirement security.

You will be automatically enrolled into the scheme’s default investment strategy. You should take time to review the following:

  • The amount of contributions you are paying, to make sure you are contributing enough to meet your retirement expectations;

  • The age at which you intend to retire: could retiring a couple of years later make a difference to your expected retirement funds; and

  • Where your funds are invested: the default investment strategy may not be suitable for your own circumstances and your funds may be better in a different fund or funds.


Being a member of the scheme does require that you put some money aside on a regular basis. There’s no substitute for deliberate, consistent action to ensure financial health for you and those you care about.

The guide you are now reading is designed to help you choose your investment funds, by introducing you to the basic concepts of investment so that you can start to make the right investment decisions for your pension savings.

These decisions are very important and are likely to have a significant bearing on the size of the fund available to you when you retire. It is therefore important that you read this guide closely and think through the information it contains before making any choices.

This guide only outlines general investment principles. When making your investment decisions, you will need to consider it alongside the fund information contained in your member guides, fund factsheets and in the prospectus provided on the member website.

Introducing your investment provider: SEI – a Manager of Managers

Founded in 1968, SEI has more than 50 years of experience in the investment services industry and is a leading provider of retirement and investment management solutions. With more than 2,000 employees and 20-plus offices located in over a dozen countries, SEI is dedicated to delivering the best of the best investment solutions to pension scheme members.

Being a ‘Manager of Managers’ means that SEI uses its research and expert analysts to find the best specialist money managers in the industry to oversee the investments in your scheme. These managers have strict SEI guidelines by which to manage the investments’ assets.

For example, an investment manager may be hired to buy and sell UK stocks for a portion of the fund. If this manager veers from this mandate and buys an excess of foreign companies’ shares, SEI will intervene. SEI knows that a retirement portfolio built with a keen investment strategy must have funds that keep to their name and their mandate. With SEI’s hands-on investment management, you can trust that the investments you choose are being managed in line with their objectives.