Changes to your Scottish Widows Master Trust Pension

The Trustees of your Scottish Widows Master Trust pension are focused on helping you achieve your retirement goals. They aim to invest your pension savings to achieve the best possible return for the level of risk they believe is acceptable. The Trustees continually review the performance and suitability of all the investment options available to you working in partnership with Scottish Widows.  

New Investment Solution

If you have not made a different investment selection - sometimes known as self-selecting - your workplace pension savings will be invested in the default investment solution. Currently this will be one of the Scottish Widows Pension Investment Approaches (PIAs). 

The Trustees have decided to introduce a new default investment solution. This is the Scottish Widows Lifetime Investment Growth Path targeting flexible access.  

Scottish Widows will be gradually moving all PIA investments to match those in Scottish Widows Lifetime Investment Growth Path, starting from 2026.   

Like the PIAs, the Scottish Widows Lifetime Investment Growth Path is an investment solution designed to make it easy for you to save for your retirement. It invests in a mix of funds, which changes as you get closer to your selected retirement age.   

The Lifetime Investment Growth Path invests 100% in company shares when you're 12 years or more from your selected retirement date. The Trustees believe increasing the amount in higher-risk investments which have greater growth potential when someone is years away from retirement will help achieve the level of growth required to provide a sustainable income in later life.

Phasing the move into the new default

If you’re in a PIA Cautious or PIA Balanced option, or a PIA Adventurous option with less than 15 years to your selected retirement age, Scottish Widows will be making gradual adjustments to increase the amount of your pension savings in higher-risk investments with greater growth potential in three phases over a two year period.  

As you get closer to your selected retirement age, Scottish Widows will continue to gradually move your pension savings into lower-risk investments, with less growth potential, to help protect the value of your pension. 

The Trustees are making this change to all the PIA options, whether you’re targeting flexible access, annuity purchase or total encashment when you reach your selected retirement age.  

If you’ve made your own investment selection and chosen to invest in any of the PIA options, the Trustees will be writing to you in advance of making the change to provide more details and the options you’ll have. 

What is a default investment solution?

What is a default investment solution?

Members of a workplace pension are invested into the default investment solution if they don't make their own investment choices.

Risk and reward

Risk and reward

Risk is linked to the growth potential of investments. Generally, the greater the risk you’re prepared to take, the greater the potential for growth. But this could also bring a greater potential for losses particularly over the shorter term. The longer you invest, the longer your investments have to ride out the ups and downs of financial markets, such as the stock market.

Being too cautious with your investments could mean ending up with less money than you need. While your savings are less likely to fall in value, they're also less likely to grow as much. 

Other enhancements

As part of the changes described above, Scottish Widows is making some significant changes across the full range of PIAs which aim to enhance their growth potential and better help you achieve your retirement goals, starting this year. These are:

  • changing the mix of investments 
  • enhancing the responsible investment approach  
  • shortening the time you are in lower-risk investments 
  • removing the build-up of cash investments for most people.   
  • Diversification, or having a mix of different investments, is crucial for spreading risk. This is because different types of investments can perform better or worse than others at different times depending on many factors, such as the state of the economy, interest rates, and world events.  So, if one type of investment falls in value, others could rise in value, cushioning the impact.  It’s also important to ensure investments are diversified across different markets and parts of the world.

    The funds PIAs invest in are ‘passively-managed’. This means they aim to match, or track, the performance of a benchmark which is typically a relevant stock market index. A stock market index is a selection of publicly-listed company shares. 

    Scottish Widows is moving to a more globally-diversified benchmark based on the MSCI All Companies World Index to aim to capture more growth opportunities from across different markets and parts of the world.

    Scottish Widows is doing this gradually over 2025.   

    Scottish Widows reviews its approach on an annual basis and, where appropriate, may include a higher weighting to UK company shares which is sometimes known as a home bias.

  • Scottish Widows is enhancing its responsible investment approach for PIAs, to better manage ESG opportunities and risks.

    It will invest more in companies with stronger ESG credentials. These include companies that are fair and inclusive, those working hard on things like reducing their negative impact on the planet and society, reducing their carbon emissions and those developing environmental solutions like clean energy. They're typically better positioned to adapt to long-term challenges, such as climate change.

    It will invest less in companies it believes aren't dealing well with ESG factors - like carbon emissions, waste and water management, workers' rights, gender equality and board diversity. They're more likely to suffer falls in their value from scandals or fines, or because they've fallen out of favour with their customers or investors.

    It won't invest in companies it believes present too much investment risk due to the nature of their business and the negative impact they have on the planet and society.

    Find out more about Scottish Widows responsible investment approach and the Trustees responsible investment approach (PDF, 120KB).

  • If you’re invested in a PIA, when you're years away from your selected retirement age, Scottish Widows invests with the aim of giving you what it believes is the best chance of growth. As you get closer to your selected retirement age, it gradually moves your pension savings into lower-risk investments with less growth potential. This is known as a ‘glidepath’ and aims to help protect your pension’s value.

    Currently, we start to move you into lower-risk investments from 15 years before your selected retirement age. We’re shortening this to 12 years, meaning your pension will benefit from greater growth potential from being in higher-risk investments for longer.

  • Your PIA currently moves a significant amount of your pension to cash-type investments starting when you’re five years from your selected retirement age. While cash investments can protect your pension value in the short term compared to other types of investments, they typically produce lower long-term returns and might not keep up with price inflation.   

    • If you’re in a PIA that’s targeting flexible access or annuity, Scottish Widows is removing this build-up of cash.  
    • If you’re less than 2 years to your selected retirement age you’ll retain an allocation to cash. 
    • If you’re targeting encashment (taking all your pension as a cash lump sum) you won’t be affected by this change.  

When are we making these enhancements?

The Trustees and Scottish Widows are managing these changes carefully to avoid sudden shifts in risk. 

March 2025

We started to change the asset allocation in the PIA funds.

June 2025

We'll start moving investments in the PIA funds into new investments with our enhanced responsible investment approach applied.

2026

We'll begin the process of moving all PIA options to the Lifetime Investment Growth Path.

2028

Everyone invested in a PIA will be benefitting from all the enhancements.

Where am I on the PIA enhancement journey?

You are here

Scottish Widows is beginning the process of moving the funds in which your pension invests into new funds with its enhanced responsible investment approach applied. 

Find out how the funds your pension invests in are changing (PDF, 300KB)


What came before?

Scottish Widows started to gradually move the PIA funds to a more globally-diversified mix of investments. This will be completed by December 2025. 

See how the asset allocation is changing (PDF, 300KB)

Where next?

In 2026, if you’re in a PIA Cautious or PIA Balanced option, or a PIA Adventurous option with less than 15 years to your selected retirement age (SRA), Scottish Widows will begin making gradual adjustments to increase the amount of your pension savings in higher-risk investments with greater growth potential to match the investments in Scottish Widows Lifetime Investment Growth Path. 

Scottish Widows will also begin the process of moving to its amended glidepaths for customers with less than 15 years to their selected retirement age (SRA). This will mean Scottish Widows will start to move your pension savings into lower-risk investments with less growth potential from 12 years to SRA, rather than 15 years to SRA. So, your pension will be in higher-risk investments with greater growth potential for longer.

We will update this page with more detail on these changes later in 2025.

Regular reviews

Pension Investment Approaches are a range of fully-governed, flexible investment options.  They invest in different types of investments which can change over time.  We regularly review the mix of investments and the investment paths (known as glidepaths) to ensure they can continue to deliver good outcomes.  Following each review, we may make changes to the mix of investments, add new investments and/or remove existing investments. 

For example, we may increase or decrease the amount invested in shares or bonds.  We may also make changes to the glidepaths.  Where we consider a change is material, we’ll let you know about the change.  Otherwise, any changes we make will be reflected in guides, factsheets and other materials we make available.