Update your target retirement age today
You can change your target retirement age at any time in My Pension Tracker, going to View account and selecting Account details.
Lifestyle options – managed for you
Lifestyle options – managed for you
Lifestyle investment options aim to grow your money while you’re a long way from retirement, then gradually reduce the investment risk as you get closer to your target retirement age.
Everything is managed for you, and you don’t need to make specific investment decisions.
When you join the Plan, your contributions are automatically invested in the continued growth lifestyle option.
Continued growth lifestyle option
The continued growth lifestyle option has three stages:
Grow
When you’re a long way from retirement, your money is invested in funds which aim to maximise growth.
From 10 years before your target retirement age, your money automatically and gradually switches from the grow fund into the strengthen fund.
Strengthen
Helps you manage the impact of the ups and downs of investment markets, by investing in a broad range of asset classes to try to reduce the risk that your fund value falls significantly.
From five years before your target retirement age, your money automatically and gradually switches into the
prepare fund
prepare fund
Prepare
Aims to protect the value of your pension fund as you approach retirement.
Source: L&G
Why choose this option?
The continued growth lifestyle strategy gets your pension fund ready for you to take a flexible income at retirement, called drawdown.
See Retirement options for more details.
Shariah lifestyle option
Shariah investment funds follow the requirements of Shariah law and the principles of Islam.
The Shariah lifestyle option follows a similar staged approach to the continued growth lifestyle but using Shariah-compliant funds.
This graph shows the stages of the Shariah lifestyle option:
Source: L&G
The value of your pension fund may go down as well as up and cannot be guaranteed. You may receive back less than your original investment.
Your target retirement age
If you’re invested in a lifestyle option, your target retirement age controls how your pension is invested over time.
Lifestyle funds automatically move your savings from higher‑risk to lower‑risk investments as you get closer to the age you’ve set.
This means….
- If you retire earlier than planned, your savings might still be in higher-risk investments, which could fall in the short term.
- If you retire later than planned, you might switch to safer investments too soon and miss out on potential growth.
It’s important to choose a target retirement age and make sure you keep it up to date with your plans for retirement.
If you don’t make a choice
If you don’t choose a target retirement age, we’ll set it as your State Pension age.
State Pension age
The State Pension age is currently age 66. It’s gradually increasing to age 67 between 2026 and 2028, depending on when you were born. A further increase up to age 68 is planned for 2037 to 2039.
If you choose a different target retirement age in the Plan, you should bear in mind when you’ll be able to claim your State Pension.
You can check your State Pension age at www.gov.uk/state-pension-age.
