Funds and Performance (2024)

*If you are a member of the Hybrid Section of the Scheme who has saved additional voluntary contributions (AVCs) withLegal & General, the information on this page applies equally to the money in your Legal & General AVC Account.

The Funds

Which Funds am I invested in?

Your most recent statement of account tells you which Fund or combination of Funds you are invested in. If you would like an updated statement of account, then please contact us.

For an explanation of each of the Funds, please read on.

The Which? Mixed Investment Funds and Selected Retirement Age

With the help of their investment advisers the Trustees have constructed three investment Funds, known as the Which? Mixed Investment Funds A, B and C.

The Funds are run by Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), and the underlying assets that make them up are described below.

Which of the three funds your money is invested in at any point in time depends upon your choice of Selected Retirement Age (SRA).

Your fund choice in the last 3 years before your SRA is chosen by you, see below.

If you were auto-enrolled into the Scheme, your SRA was set at 65 and you will have been emailed to ask you to consider whether this age is right for you.

Your SRA may be any age and you may change your SRA at any time, subject to giving the Pensions Manager one month's written notice.

Your SRA is not meant to be the age at which you are bound to take your benefits, however it does tellthe Pensions Team how you wish us to invest your money, as summarised in thistable.

These gradual changes in how your Pension Account is invested is the way in which the Trustees provide you with some protection against a sudden change in the value of your Pension Account as you approach your SRA.

This is known as 'Lifestyling' and is intended to help you plan your retirement.

As the above table shows you the Funds are invested in a diversified range of underlying assets:

• equities (i.e. company shares),
• bonds issued by governments and companies around the world (a bond is a loan made to the bond issuer in return for a regular interest payment),
• property (retail and commercial) and
• cash.

You may read more about the current asset allocations in the most recent Investment Newsletter.

To see how the Funds have performed in the last year against the Trustees’ Investment Target see the most recent Chair's Statement.

For more detail about these investments see the Pensions Team pages on the Intranet or contact us.

The Gilt and Cash Funds

Gilts are a type of bond:they pay a rate of interest and are issued and backed by the British Government.

The Gilt Fund is a tracker that aims to mirror the returns of the UK gilt market.

It tracks the 'FTSE Government (Over 15 Year)'gilt index, which invests in medium and long-term government-issued fixed interest gilts.

Gilts offer less risk than stocks and shares because their price and therefore their capital value tends to be less changeable. Their capital value is linked to interest rates.

Generally less risk means lower returns, and gilt returns have historically been lower than returns from stocks and shares over the long-term.

The Cash Fund aims to deliver competitive rates of return from cash deposits and other short-term investments.

It offers security of capital over the short-term, rather than growth in the long-term.

Cash is generally not considered a suitable asset for longer periods of investment of years rather than months, because historically it has lacked the ability to keep pace with inflation.

Investment Options when You Get Closer to Retiring

As you approach the three years before your SRA we will ask you to make a choice between three different investment options designed to cater for different retirement plans. These are:

Your Trustees urge you to seek independent financial advice before making a decision on your retirement investment option.

The Additional Voluntary Contribution (AVC) Funds

If you added more money to your Pension Account by making additional voluntary contributions to the 'Lifestyled AVCs', this money is invested and lifestyled in exactly the same way as described above.

If you added money to the 'Ethical UK Equity AVC Fund' it is not lifestyled in this way, so all the money stays invested in the same fund unlessyou tell us you want to move it.

TheEthical UK Equity AVC Fund is not available to members of the Hybrid Section of the Scheme.

Protection for your Pension Account in the event of Legal & General default

The Trustees may be able to claim compensation under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme if Legal & General are unable to meet their liabilities.

The current level of compensation available is 100% of the claim with no upper limit.

Legal & General Investment Management Limited, the DC Section's investment manager, is a subsidiary of Legal & General Group plc, one of the UK's largest insurance companies, and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Funding based on Environmental Social and Governance scores (ESG)

Your Trustees believe that environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations are likely to have a long-term financial impact on the sustainability of your investments and the value of your Pension Account.

Your Trustees have worked with their investment advisers to choose funds to add into the Which? Mixed Investments Funds A, B and C that give greater weight to companies that score well against ESG criteria. This means that Funds A, B and C allocate more of your money to companies that score well against ESG criteria and less to companies that do not.

These Funds are represented in the LGIM Future World Equity Index Fund. This index tracks a selection of global equities (stocks and shares issued by companies) that excludes pure coal miners, companies that produce controversial weapons and companies in perennial breach of the UN Global Compact. Companies allowed into the index are further assessed using 28 ESG "data points" each of which is the score for a particular detail of ESG and can be measured for all of the constituent companies.

All of the ESG data points are publicly available, can be reliably measured, and are regularly provided by each company. They include a number of data points that exist to assess the quality of the other ESG-related data provided, thus creating an integral “Transparency Score”. All the 28 scores taken together allow the calculation of an overall ESG score for a company. This is used to weight the allocation of money to each company within the index.

A company may be excluded from the index for failure to meet minimum ESG standards and may be readmitted if it improves.

LGIM’s involvement with the companies does not end there, as the ESG scores are used to help LGIM decide on how to engage with the company, for example how to vote at share-holder meetings, in order to encourage the companies to improve their scores.

In this way, your money is used to influence the behaviour of companies around the World.

Find out more about LGIM’s approach to ESG hereand how the scoring works.

You canread LGIM's most recent reports on ESG here.

Fund Performance and Factsheets

Fund Performance Comparison

The following performance chart shows side-by-side the performancefigures foreach of the Funds over oneyear.The performance is measured as the percentage change in each Fund's unit price.

(*The Gilt Fund AVC has no performance figure because no money has ever been invested in it).

The dotted lines on the chart show the Trustee's performance targets for Funds A, B and C (and their AVC versions) and the rate of inflation used to calculate those targets, based on the Consumer Prices Index (CPIH) at the end of the quarter.

The Gilt Fund has no targetbecause it is intended to follow the performance of gilt funds in general, which determine the price of annuities.

The Cash Fund has no target because it is not intended as a long-term investment option.

The Ethical Fund AVC has no target because it is intended for members who wish to follow a distinct investment strategy from the Trustees' targets.

To see the performance of oneparticular Fund over different periods, please refer to the Fund's factsheet below.

Factsheets

The following factsheets are provided every quarter by the investment manager, LGIM.

For each individual Fund they show a snapshot of the performance over various time periods. The performance is measured as the percentage change in the unit price over three months, six months, one year, three years andfive years.

Where the period is for more than one year, the performance has been scaled to show you an annual performance for each year in the period.

The factsheets also detailthe underlying assets that comprise the Fund and the annual charges made by LGIM for managing your investment.

Funds A, B, C, Giltand Cash

While you were a current member of the DC Section your monthly mandatory contributions were used to buy units in these Funds.

AVC Funds A, B,C, Giltand Cashplus Ethical UK Equity AVC Fund

If you added more money to your Pension Account by making additional voluntary contributions it could beinvested in these AVC Funds.

Hybrid AVC Funds A, B, C, Giltand Cash

If you are a member of the Hybrid Section these are the Legal & General AVC Funds that you may have invested in.