Check your pension isn’t poisonous

Your pension fund manager may decide to move your savings into 'safer' assets ahead of your retirement. Make sure that doesn't cost you your pension, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Pension fund managers mean well. They really do. It is just that the strategies they use in their efforts to look after your money don't always work.

Take lifestyling'. This is the idea that five to ten years before you retire your savings should be shifted into less risky assets than before. This makes obvious sense. After all, if you haven't much working life left, the last thing you want is to see the value of your retirement assets suddenly collapse by 20%.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.