Our collaboration with BlackRock and the new sustainable fund

At Penfold we were very proud to collaborate early on in our development with the world's largest investment manager, BlackRock, by choosing them to protect and grow our customers' pension savings.

In doing so, we became one of the very first companies to offer a new suite of investment funds from BlackRock that were ideally suited to our customer base and our fundamental principles of investment, the BlackRock MyMap range.

BlackRock has just announced the 1 year anniversary of these funds, having seen some of the best performance of any funds in their category. Not only did they outperform the global equity markets and their nearest competitors in terms of growth over their first year, but also in how they protected our customers’ savings from the worst of the recent market turmoil during the pandemic.

We are very happy that during a time of such stress, our customers have had to worry that little bit less about the value of their pension pot.

That's why we are also happy to announce that we will very soon be launching a sustainable investment option for our customers, also offered by BlackRock, as a follow-on to their MyMap range. More details coming soon!

Our fundamental principles of investing

As a pension company we are trusted by our customers first and foremost to do two really important things (amongst others!):

1. Protect their money
2. Give their savings an extra boost over the long term by investing it, until they have enough that they can stop working one day

We take both of these jobs incredibly seriously. You can read about the many ways we protect your money in our blog post here.

When it comes to investing your savings, we continually dedicate a huge amount of research into the best ways to do this, to achieve that balance between protecting and growing your pot over the long term.

We do this with four fundamental principles in mind, based on our experience in the investment industry, and backed up by leading academic research from several Nobel Prize winning economists, which are:

1. Passive investing - using technology to invest broadly across whole markets and not relying on humans picking individual companies to invest in
2. Diversification - spreading your savings across a wide range of different types of investments, to reduce the chance that they all go up or down in value at the same time
3. Low cost - small differences in fees can accumulate to huge differences in overall pot size, so we keep the investment fees as low as possible
4. Managed risk - using technology to adapt the way your savings are invested, in response to what is happening in the investment markets and the wider world

You can read more about these fundamental principles in our introduction to investing.

Our collaboration with BlackRock & how your investments have performed

Following extensive research in the early stages of our development, we met with BlackRock, the world's largest investment manager. They completely understood and supported our vision to help the self-employed save more for retirement.

Our shared philosophy on investment principles led us to work with them to offer the BlackRock MyMap investment options to our customers. Penfold became one of the very first platforms to offer these funds, on the very first day that they were officially launched. You can read more about how Penfold savings are invested here.

We remain hugely proud of that decision, as BlackRock are now celebrating the 1st anniversary of the MyMap funds with some of the best investment performance of any similar funds over the last 12 months.

Not only have the funds grown more than global equity markets and other comparable investment options in their first year, but the emphasis on Managed Risk, our 4th fundamental investment principle, has really helped to protect our customers' money during the Coronavirus pandemic.

With all the stress that the self-employed community (and everyone else of course!) is under during this crisis, we are very happy that due to the investment options we have provided our customers, the value of their pension pot is one less thing to worry about.

Sustainable funds

BlackRock have recently made huge strides in their long term commitment towards sustainability, bringing in sustainable practices throughout all their investment processes. You can read more about their commitment in this open letter from BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink.

We know many of our customers are keen to take this commitment to the next level, by choosing an investment plan for their pension that is more in line with their own values around global sustainability.

That is why we're extremely excited to announce that we will soon be launching our sustainable investment option for all customers!

This investment option will also be offered by BlackRock, and your money will be invested in a similar way to the MyMap fund range we offer, but with an additional focus on sustainability.

Our goal is to offer our thousands of customers the option to use their savings to make a more positive impact in the world through investing in more sustainable companies. We'll share more information when this is ready.

References

Introduction to investing

How your savings are invested