Reduce Employer NICs: Salary Sacrifice Pensions
Hand-picked, diversified pension plans that help grow wealth
Our pension plans invest in a series of innovative funds provided and managed by BlackRock and HSBC. These funds invest across different markets around the world, offering a range of risk and return profiles to suit your goals.
As with all investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investments may go down as well as up.
The Penfold Plan
Exclusive to Penfold, our default plan offers 100% FSCS protection, pursues sustainability goals and is custom built to help boost your pension pot
The Penfold Plan is designed to support you throughout your life. It automatically adjusts its asset allocation across three stages as you reach retirement age: Penfold Growth, Balance and Protect.
The Penfold Plan is suitable for the majority of our customers who do not want to make their own investment or fund risk decisions. It aims to take customers through to retirement, seeking to deliver a low-cost and good-value outcome.
You can also choose your own stage of the Penfold Plan to fit your investment preferences, regardless of how long you have until retirement. It's easy to adjust your risk level in a couple of taps, online or with our app.
Find out more about the Penfold Plan, explore our other investment options below or seek investment advice.
100% FSCS protection
Your entire pension is fully protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, no matter how much you’ve saved. If the provider Blackrock Life Funds were to fail we would seek to recover 100% of any loss suffered by you.
Expert management
We collaborate with the world's largest investment manager, BlackRock, to seek to protect and grow our customers' pension savings with our Penfold Plan.
Positive environmental goals
We believe that environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters are important for the future of our planet. The Penfold Plan aims to balance positive impact with potential returns, aligning your savings with your values.
If the Penfold Plan doesn't meet your needs, explore our other plans:
Sharia
Managed by HSBC. Approved by an independent Sharia committee, this plan invests 100% in shares that are fully compliant with Sharia law.
Sustainable
Managed by BlackRock. Invests in countries and companies with sustainability goals, adjusting your risk level as you get older and into retirement. You can also tailor to different risk levels.
Standard
Managed by BlackRock. Our simplest plan which invests your money across stocks, bonds and commodities, adjusting your risk level as you get older and into retirement. You can also tailor to different risk levels.
Our investment principles
At Penfold, we think about four principles of investment when it comes to growing our members’ assets.
- Passive investments. Our plans use funds that provide exposure across whole markets as opposed to actively managed funds which involve humans picking individual investments. These passive-style strategies have been proven to generally outperform active strategies over the long term.
- Low cost. We believe in low-cost investments to help everyone save enough to be comfortable in later life. Our plans invest across a wide range of low-cost investments called exchange-traded funds to keep the cost as low as possible for you.
- Diversification. Diversification sounds complex, but it simply means not having all your eggs in one basket. Our plans hold a wide range of investment types across different regions and asset classes to reduce the risk that multiple markets could fall at the same time. This helps to smooth out volatility. Our plans invest across equities, bonds, commodities and other alternative assets.
- Active risk management. To manage risk, our core fund managers use technology to respond to what’s happening in the markets and the world as a whole. They do this by actively changing the investment allocation across different asset classes depending on the level of volatility in the market, providing an added layer of protection for you compared to more rigid investment portfolios.
Backed by the biggest
Your pension plans are managed by two of the best known fund managers on the planet.
BlackRock
Our Penfold Plan is entirely exclusive to Penfold and is managed by BlackRock. Our Standard and Sustainable Plans are also managed by BlackRock. These plans invest your money across different markets around the world, offering a range of risk and return profiles to match your goals. Dynamic allocation helps these funds outperform other investment strategies that typically stick to a more rigid investment formula (like a “60/40” stocks to bonds fund).
HSBC
Our Sharia plan invests in the HSBC Islamic Global Equity Index Fund and is suitable for anyone looking for a socially-responsible, Sharia compliant way of saving for the future. The fund has an elected Sharia board monitoring the fund and investments to ensure it remains Sharia compliant. All major decisions must pass the board and they issue an annual certificate evaluating compliance with Sharia principles.
Please see our FAQ below for more information about how the fund managers manage your funds.
Have your say
A portion of each pension fund is made up of stocks, which may include a small stake in companies like Apple, Microsoft or Google. Most pension providers don't let savers see which companies they're invested in. But to us, that doesn’t seem right.
Our view is that everyone should know where your money is invested. That's why our Explore Your Pension feature gives savers complete visibility into their investments - including a breakdown of each individual company they have a stake in.
Explore Your Pension also provides a platform for voting on issues raised at company AGMs. There's also visibility of vote history, how the majority of Penfold savers voted, and vote results. Even better, it's completely anonymous.
More benefits of our pension
Charges & fees
We hate hidden charges. That’s why we have one fee that covers absolutely everything within our service.
Salary sacrifice
Cut business and employees National Insurance bills with free salary sacrifice consultation and implementation.
Single savings view
Combine pensions into one account to see total pension savings and get a clear view of projected retirement lifestyle.
Protection
Have peace of mind that pension savings managed by Penfold will be looked after, no matter what the future holds.
Frequently asked questions about our funds
Learn more about our Penfold Plan and its three stages: Growth, Balance and Protect:
- Penfold Plan - Download the factsheet
While the Penfold Plan is exclusive to us, details about our other plans are available on BlackRock and HSBC’s websites:
- Standard lifetime plan, Stage 1 - BlackRock MyMap 6
- Standard lifetime plan, Stage 2 - BlackRock MyMap 5
- Standard lifetime plan, Stage 3 - BlackRock MyMap 4
- Sustainable lifetime plan, Stage 1 - BlackRock MyMap 7 Select ESG Fund
- Sustainable lifetime plan, Stage 2 - BlackRock MyMap 5 Select ESG Fund
- Sustainable lifetime plan, Stage 3 - BlackRock MyMap 3 Select ESG Fund
- Standard plan, Level 1: BlackRock MyMap 3
- Standard plan, Level 2: BlackRock MyMap 4
- Standard plan, Level 3: BlackRock MyMap 5
- Standard plan, Level 4: BlackRock MyMap 6
- Sustainable plan, Level 1: BlackRock MyMap 3 Select ESG Fund
- Sustainable plan, Level 3: BlackRock MyMap 5 Select ESG Fund
- Sustainable plan, Level 5: BlackRock MyMap 7 Select ESG Fund
- Sharia plan: HSBC Islamic Global Equity Index Fund
We’ve made it easy, and free, to change your pension plan or adjust the risk level in just a few taps from the Penfold dashboard.
We hate hidden fees and you probably do too. We'll only charge you one fair, transparent annual fee for administering your pension that covers absolutely everything, including the BlackRock/HSBC fund management fee, within Penfold’s pension service.
With our Penfold Plan (and our Standard and Sustainable Plans) you'll pay an annual fee of 0.75%. This is split between Penfold and BlackRock.
If you’re invested in the Penfold Plan, we automatically deduct this fee in full from your pension in 12 monthly instalments*. If your pension pot size is larger than £100,000 the fee is reduced to 0.4% on the portion of your savings over this amount.
If you’re invested in our Standard or Sustainable Plans, we automatically deduct Penfold’s portion of your annual fee from your pension in 12 monthly instalments, while BlackRock takes its fee from the fund itself, which isn’t shown in the activity page of the Penfold app. If your pension pot size is larger than £100,000 the fee is reduced to 0.4% on the portion of your savings over this amount.
With the Sharia plan you pay an annual fee of 0.88%. We automatically deduct Penfold’s portion of your annual fee from your pension in 12 monthly instalments, and HSBC takes its fee from the fund itself, which isn’t shown in the Penfold app. If your pension pot size is larger than £100,000 the fee is reduced to 0.53% on the portion of your savings over this amount.
Find out more about our pension plan fees.
*Penfold Plan costs include 0.02% administrative expenses that are incurred directly within the underlying funds
As an under-18 year old who has been enrolled into our workplace pension you'll have the same full-featured access to Penfold as anyone else with one difference. If you're under-18 you are unable to make changes to the default plan you have been invested in and your pension must remain invested in this plan until you reach the age of 18.
Flexibility is important to us here at Penfold, including the ability to select a plan from our carefully selected range. You will still be able to view all of our plan options and as soon as you reach the age of 18 you will have the option to switch your plan to any that we offer.
With the Penfold Plan, your entire pension is fully protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, no matter how much you’ve saved. If the provider, Blackrock Life Funds, were to fail we would seek to recover 100% of any loss suffered by you. All our other plans are protected up to £85,000.
At Penfold we don’t hold or manage your money ourselves. Anything you pay or transfer into your Penfold pension is initially deposited into a secure account held by a custodian bank. Your money is usually held here for one business day before being used to buy into your investment plan, managed by BlackRock or HSBC, two of the world’s largest money managers.
As with any investment, this involves risk. The value of your pension can go up as well as down, and you could get back less than you put in. However, greater risk can lead to greater returns. If you have a long time before retirement, investing over the long-term can help ease any short-term losses.
All of your pension savings are kept separate from Penfold and belong entirely to you – your money can’t be touched by us or any of our partners. In the unlikely event that something negative happened to Penfold your pension would be transferred to another provider, ready for your retirement.
Find out more about how we keep your pension safe
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