Heineken regularly reviews its default and lifestyle funds alongside annuity prices and inflation to give a better picture on the purchasing power of the funds.
Speaking at Employee Benefits Pensions and Workplace Savings Summit 2013, Carol Young, pensions manager at Heineken, said: “One of the things that we felt very strongly about both in our default fund and in our lifestyle funds was that it wasn’t enough just to look at the performance of the fund in isolation.
“We look at what we think of as the purchasing power of our funds. We looked, with our provider and consultant, not just at how they [the funds] performed but how annuity prices had moved and how inflation had moved.”
These reviews are carried out on a quarterly basis to provide an accurate picture of what the funds will provide members.
Young adds that this provided the organisation with knowledge not only on how the funds were performing but the kind of returns pension scheme members could expect when they retired, something, she adds, that employees were keen to see the organisation keep track of.
