A pension is a long-term investment. Its value can go down as well as up and could be worth less than was paid in. Laws and tax rules may change in the future. Your own circumstances and where you live in the UK will also have an impact on tax treatment.

Is our Stakeholder Pension right for you?

Stakeholder pensions were introduced in 2001 to encourage more people to save for retirement.

We now offer two easy-to-use personal pensions - our Stakeholder Pension and our Personal Pension.

The Personal Pension may offer better value for money depending on the investments you choose, so it's worth considering both.

 

Compare our pensions

  Stakeholder Personal Pension
Annual charge* 0.80 - 1.00% 0.55%
No. of investment options 50+
Fund guide		 50+
Fund guide
Start, stop and
change payments		    
Tax relief    
Flexible withdrawals**    
Apply online    
 

 

Find out more

*These are the annual charges for the default investment options for each plan (referred to as the Fund Management Charge in the Stakeholder plan / Total Annual Charge in the Personal Pension). Charges can change and will vary depending on how you invest. Charges for our Stakeholder pension are capped at 1.00% and may reduce depending on the value of your plan. Figures correct as at 11 October 2024.

**You can normally access the money in your pension when you're 55 (or 57 from 6 April 2028).

How our Standard Life Stakeholder Pension works

This type of pension plan could be right for you if you’re looking for a straightforward pension with low minimum payments and low charges.

Paying into your Stakeholder Pension 

You can start a Stakeholder Pension Plan with us from just £16. You can start, stop or change payments to your pension plan online at any time. This gives you the freedom to pay as much as you want when you want.

Money saved into your pension plan will also be topped up by HMRC thanks to tax relief. So if you pay £16, HMRC will top this up to £20. If you’re a higher or additional rate taxpayer, you can contact HMRC for the extra tax relief. 

 

Investment options

With our Stakeholder Pension Plan you can pick from a carefully selected range of investment options.

  • Option 1: you can choose from three strategic lifestyle profiles, which are investment options specifically designed to make it easy for you to save for retirement. Once you’re in a lifestyle profile, you don’t need to do anything, although we do recommend that you regularly review your investments to make sure they’re on track to meet your goals.
     
  • Option 2: you can choose from over 50 funds to invest in. You can invest in up to 12 funds at any one time, but if you decide to pick a lifestyle profile, you can only combine this with a with-profits fund.

If you don’t want to choose a fund, that’s fine too. We will automatically invest your money into a lifestyle profile.

For more information on Stakeholder Strategic Lifestyle Profiles, please read our helpful guide (PDF, 111KB).

You can learn more about the different funds, their cost and performance, and take a look at their factsheets by using our fund checker.

 

Charges

The amount you pay for your Stakeholder Pension Plan is based on the investments you choose. Each fund has an Fund Management charge (FMC) which covers the cost of running the fund and administering your plan.

With a Stakeholder Pension Plan, charges are low and you only need to pay a maximum charge of 1% of the value of the funds you’re invested in each year. This means it could cost you less than you might think to save for the future.

If the amount of money in your pension plan is over £25,000, you will receive a discount to the fund charges. This is done by adding extra units to your fund(s) each month.

Here’s the discount you could get:

How much you have in your pension Yearly discount rate
Under £25,000 None
£25,000 - £49,999 0.1%
£50,000 +

0.2%

 

Manage your Stakeholder Pension online

With the online dashboard and mobile app, you can manage your pension plan anytime, anywhere. This means you can manage your payments and more whenever you like.

Important information

You can find out more information on the Stakeholder Pension Plan by reading the documents below. They can also help you understand your investment options.

Stakeholder Pension Plan key features (205KB)

How to choose the right investment options for your pension plan (2.5MB)