Scottish Widows funds

Funds you can invest in through your PIP – if you took your plan out with Scottish Widows.

Fund options

You can invest in four funds through your Personal Investment Plan (PIP) – you can make additional payments to, or move your investment between, these four funds at any time. This is currently free of charge.

Fund charges

A Yearly Management Charge (YMC), which is a percentage of the fund value, is deducted from each fund and is reflected in the unit price each day. The YMC doesn’t include any additional expenses for operating the fund. These additional expenses are added to the YMC to form the total yearly fund charge. The table below shows the YMC and the current estimated total yearly fund charge for each fund:

Scottish Widows funds Yearly management charge Current estimated total yearly fund charge
Cautious Growth Fund (PDF, 162KB) 1.10% 1.22%
Balanced Growth Fund (PDF, 169KB) 1.10% 1.31%
Progressive Growth Fund (PDF, 170KB) 1.10% 1.26%
Adventurous Growth Fund (PDF, 154KB) 1.10% 1.36%

Based on fund information as at November 2022.

Important information

Our charges can change, and may increase if:

  • there’s a change in a tax rule or law which affects us, or the plan
  • exceptional circumstances result in an increase to our costs to administer the PIP, or cause our income from charges to be less than we anticipated.

We will give you three months’ notice if we change our charges.

Reduction in yearly management charges (YMC)

If the total amount you’ve paid into your plan after withdrawals (known as the ‘adjusted premium’) is £30,000 or more, we’ll currently provide a discount to the 1.10% YMC that we take, as follows:

Adjusted premium YMC YMC discount Effective YMC after discount
Less than £30,000 1.10% Nil 1.10%
£30,000 to £124,999.99 1.10% 0.10% 1.00%
£125,000 to £499,999.99 1.10% 0.15% 0.95%
£500,000 plus 1.10% 0.20% 0.90%

We’ll do this by adding extra units to your plan on the 31st December each year. If you made a withdrawal that reduced your adjusted premium to under £30,000 then no YMC reduction would be applied for that year. Movements in the value of your plan aren’t taken into account when calculating the level of discount we may apply to your YMC.

You may also receive a further discount to your YMC of up to 0.50% if you’ve added any money to your plan on or after 1st October 2012 and before 29th November 2021. Any money added to your plan before or after that window will not qualify for the additional 0.50% discount. The additional discount will apply to the units bought with the top up only, not the whole plan.

For those with adjusted premiums of £30,000 or more, any units bought during that specific window will receive this additional discount on top of the discounts shown above.

We’ll achieve this discount by adding units to your plan at the end of each calendar year. The table below illustrates what the effective YMC would be for any units bought with a top-up on or after 1st October 2012 and before 29th November 2021.

Adjusted premium YMC Additional discount for units bought with top-ups on or after 1st October 2012 and before 29th November 2021 Effective YMC after 0.50% discount
Less than £30,000 1.10% 0.50% 0.60%
£30,000 to £124,999.99 1.00% (already inclusive of 0.10% discount) 0.50% 0.50%
£125,000 to £499,999.99 0.95% (already inclusive of 0.15% discount) 0.50% 0.45%
£500,000 plus 0.90% (already inclusive of 0.20% discount) 0.50% 0.40%

Will I get a loyalty bonus?

Depending on how long you invest in the plan you may be eligible to receive a loyalty bonus. Each loyalty bonus is calculated based on the average daily plan value over a given time, as shown in the table below. It’s paid by adding units to the plan, as long as your plan is still invested when the loyalty bonus is due.

You can find more information about charges, loyalty bonuses and reductions to YMC on pages 3–4 of the Key Features (PDF, 202KB).

Loyalty bonus due date Bonus units added
5th plan anniversary 0.50% of the average plan value up to the 5th plan anniversary
10th plan anniversary 0.75% of the average plan value between the 5th and 10th plan anniversaries
15th plan anniversary 1% of the average plan value between the 10th and 15th plan anniversaries

Scottish Widows growth funds

We've produced definitions for our investment funds which contain the terms ‘Adventurous’, ‘Balanced’, ‘Cautious’ and ‘Progressive’ to help you better understand how we define the level of risk associated with each investment. These definitions are relevant to the Cautious Growth Fund, Balanced Growth Fund, Progressive Growth Fund and Adventurous Growth Fund from Scottish Widows, available to invest in through your Personal Investment Plan.

Scottish Widows Growth Funds have exposure to different types of investments as described in the fund aims. These investments can include bonds (also known as fixed interest securities), equities, property, commodities and alternative investments depending on the fund’s investment objectives.

We may change what the funds are invested in and the selection of funds that we make available.

Increasing Risk

Cautious Balanced Progressive Adventurous

Our Cautious funds are dominated by lower risk assets such as government bonds and high quality corporate bonds, but additionally may include small exposures to high-yield bonds.

These funds may also have some exposure to shares (UK and international), property and other riskier assets which have the potential for higher returns than bonds.

These funds are intended to provide modest returns and modest levels of volatility compared to our other multi-asset funds, which typically have higher exposure to shares.

Our Balanced funds aim to hold a mixture of shares and bonds typically on a relatively equal basis. Where permitted, these funds will have some exposures to property and absolute return strategies and other assets.

These funds therefore aim to have a balanced mix of higher and lower risk assets and therefore a balance between return potential and the lower volatility offered by lower risk assets.

Our Progressive funds are dominated by exposure to UK and international shares but may also have some bonds, property, cash and absolute returns strategies to aim to lower volatility during market fluctuations.

These funds seek higher returns which might be achieved from investment in shares, compared to our other multi-asset funds with lower risk assets, but may experience greater volatility of returns.

Our Adventurous funds invest almost totally in UK and international shares, but may hold minor exposures to bonds, property or absolute return strategies.

These funds therefore have the greatest potential for return but also the greatest risk of potential loss compared to our other multi-asset funds which hold larger percentages of lower risk assets.

Investment periods

We categorise investment periods as follows:

Short-term: Up to 5 years
Medium-term: Between 5 and 10 years
Long-term: Over 10 years

Investment risk can change over time

Over time your investment could move away from your preferred level of risk, either becoming less risky (normally with less potential for growth) or more risky (normally with more potential for growth). This happens when some assets within a fund perform better than others. For example, if equities in a fund grew at a higher rate than other assets, such as gilts and fixed interests, more of the fund’s underlying investments would be in equities.

This would increase the level of risk for the fund because equities are considered to be higher risk, as they are more likely to have fluctuations in value. So the chances of your fund reducing in value is higher.

So it’s important to regularly review your fund choices and check they’re still right for you. Your latest annual statement will provide you with details of the funds you’re currently invested in. You can review your fund’s fact sheet for more information – including where your fund invests, its aims and the past performance.