What is your workplace pension invested in?

The default fund

A workplace pension scheme has a default fund, where contributions go unless a member chooses otherwise. Anyone enrolled without choosing a fund is in it. It is often the largest sum a household will ever hold, and many members never log in to see it.

A default fund is built for every member of the scheme at once, so it holds a mixture: shares, bonds, and often property and cash. It aims at a balance most members could live with, set for no member in particular.

Many default funds are lifestyle or target date funds. They hold more in shares while retirement is far off and move towards bonds and cash as the scheme’s retirement date nears, because there is less time left to recover from a fall. That date is the scheme’s assumption about when you will stop and take the money, and it is yours to change.

Why the mix matters

The share held in equities, which is shares in companies, decides two things at once: how far the pot can fall in a bad year, and how far it can grow over decades. Bonds and cash move less, and over long periods have tended to grow less.

Two different things frame how much of that movement suits a person. One is attitude: how comfortable they are watching the pot fall. The other is capacity: whether a fall would actually hurt, which turns on how long until the money is needed and what else they could live on. The regulator has asked advisers to weigh both, and found capacity the one more often missed.

Capacity turns mostly on time. A fall early in a working life has decades to recover, and the contributions that keep arriving buy more while prices are low. The same fall a year before retirement has no such time.

The path the fund has set

A default fund is set for the member in the middle. For someone decades from retirement, that can mean holding less in equities than their own time could bear. It can also mean a path that starts easing towards bonds and cash while the money is still decades from being needed.

The fund does not check whether its path fits a particular member. The path was set before they joined, for every member, so that nobody has to choose.

For a young member, a cautious path costs growth that did not happen, in the years when it would have compounded longest. No statement shows that cost.

Presented with the facts, a member may conclude that the path suits them, or may consider a different mix within the same scheme, held for longer before it eases. Either is a decision only they can make, with their comfort with a fall weighed against the time they have. A fund can be changed within the scheme without leaving it or losing what your employer pays in.

What the fund charges

A fund’s yearly charge is quoted as an OCF, the ongoing charges figure. Older documents call the same thing a TER, the total expense ratio. It comes off inside the fund before growth reaches you, so it never appears as a payment, and it is taken in good years and bad.

The cap is law. It leaves out the cost of buying and selling inside the fund, and it does not apply to a fund a member chooses for themselves within the scheme, which may charge more. The other rows are typical ranges, industry estimate, not official guidance, each read on the day given under the sources.

A charge is small in a year and large over decades, because it comes out of growth that would otherwise have compounded. A dearer fund is not a worse one, and a cheaper fund is not a better one. The charge is one fact to set beside what the fund holds and how it has done.

Where each of these is written

• Your annual statement names the fund you are in, the retirement date it assumes, what it charged and how it has done over the year.
• The fund’s factsheet, on your provider’s website or app, names what the fund holds and the share of each, its yearly charge and its risk rating.
• Your scheme’s fund list shows the other funds you could hold within it, with the same facts for each.
• Your provider’s app or website is where the retirement date and the fund are changed, and your employer’s contributions carry on whichever fund you hold.

The years ahead

What the state provides in retirement is set by governments, and the rules change.

At the time of writing, in October 2026, the government has announced a change to how the State Pension rises from April 2030. The change is not yet law.

Each year the State Pension would then rise by the highest of inflation, 2.5% and the rise needed to keep its value in line with earnings, rather than by earnings growth itself.

This guide informs. It does not say which fund to hold or what mix to choose. MoneyHelper gives free, impartial guidance on pension choices, and a regulated financial adviser can advise on your own case.

How Landfall handles it

Every figure on a plan is already after charges. Under each chart, the Detail row holds a note naming the blended rate the plan is using and where to change it. How charges are set and taken, in more detail.

A pot can also be split into holdings, such as equities, bonds and cash. Each has its own growth, its own volatility and its own place in the queue when money is drawn. Once a pot has holdings, its growth is the blend of theirs.