We’ve received many queries from members asking about the sustainability of their pension pots with us in recent years. It’s something we’ve been working hard to improve and, between 2023 and 2024, we introduced our new range of sustainable investment options.
Most Creative Pension Trust members use our ‘default investment strategy’, leaving the investment decision-making to us. Our new strategy, Cushon Core, has the primary goal of growing your pension pot, but doing it in a much more sustainable way.
How Cushon Core works over time
When you’re younger, Cushon Core mainly invests in global equities – leading companies from all over the world with high growth potential – and in some global bonds. This mixture of investments is designed to give your pension long-term growth.
As you head towards retirement, we start shifting your investments to bonds and cash, aiming to protect your pot from the bigger ups and downs that occur in investment markets from time to time. We start these changes 7 years before your Target Retirement Age. This is 65, although you can change it to suit your plans using the Creative Pension Trust Member Portal.
Growth Phase – Investing with a positive impact
We invest your pension in a way that does far less harm to the planet. Cushon Core aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which means we prioritise investments in companies with greener, more sustainable practices. You benefit from long-term growth while contributing to a cleaner, more sustainable future.
We’re not only committed to securing your financial future, but also ensuring a sustainable world for you to retire into. We see climate change as a financially material risk. Put simply, we believe the risk posed by a changing climate is not being accurately reflected by the market and asset valuations may be impacted over time.
Therefore, we are striving to build climate risk resilience to your pot by carefully minimising our exposure to the losers, and capturing the potential winners (such as clean energy generation) of a transitioning global economy, with the goal of maximising your pot for retirement.
1) Cushon Global Equity fund: 90%
We invest 90% of your pension in global equities to maximise long-term growth. These include well-known brands like Apple, Microsoft, AstraZeneca, and Tesco. We’ve partnered with Macquarie to manage this Sustainable True Index, which aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).
By excluding companies that don’t meet these standards, your investments focus on those making a positive environmental and social impact. Our index also targets a 7% annual reduction in carbon emissions, ensuring your portfolio grows sustainably without compromising on performance. It closely tracks the FTSE All World index, and as the world moves towards Net Zero, we only expect it to perform better.
UN Sustainable Development Goals:
2) Cushon Global Bonds fund: 10%
Within our bond fund, we spread your investments across four strategies:
Easing into retirement
7 years before your Target Retirement Age, your pension pot will automatically move towards investments designed to shield the value of your pension from some of the bigger ups and downs in investment markets.
Here’s a breakdown of how those investments change during those 7 years leading up to your Target Retirement Age:
Factsheets
More information and performance data for the funds we use in Cushon Core can be found below.
Risk Warnings
When you invest, there are always associated risks that you need to be aware of.
Investment risk: This is the risk that the value of your pension may go down as well as up. As with all investments, you may get back less than you paid in. It’s important to remember that your pension value can go down as well as up, even as you get closer to your Target Age.
We will automatically move some of your investments to ones that are considered more cautious as you get closer to your Target Age to help protect the value of your pension from the bigger ups and downs in investment markets. However, we cannot offer any guarantees.
Liquidity risk: This is the risk that some investments cannot be sold as quickly as others. To give your pension the opportunity to grow for the long term, we invest in a range of different types of assets. This means some of your pension investments will be less ‘liquid’ than others.
Whilst this makes them suitable for supporting the long-term growth of your pension, it also means there may be, on very limited occasions, a waiting period imposed on cashing in your pension e.g. transferring your pension or taking your pension in one lump sum at short notice.
Investment objective risk: This is the risk that the Cushon Core Investment Strategy might not meet its investment objectives which could mean your savings outcomes are not realised.
The Cushon Core Investment Strategy has been designed to meet the needs of most of our members, but this doesn’t mean that it is suitable for your particular savings goals or that it will meet its objectives. It’s important that you review your investments to make sure they align with your future plans.
Financial guidance and advice: Your choice of pension investments can have a big effect on your pot value at retirement. If you are in any doubt about which fund is right for you, you should speak to a financial adviser.
