What is My Future Focus?
My Future Focus is our flagship default solution, aimed at customers who want that bit more from their pension. The solution invests in a broad range of asset classes, including developed and emerging market equities, UK and overseas government and corporate bonds, as well as emerging market bonds and high yield bonds and UK commercial property. We invest in this way to provide the benefits of diversification.
Managing volatility through the retirement journey
A key feature of My Future Focus is how we manage volatility throughout the retirement journey. This means that My Future Focus mainly invests in riskier assets in the 'growth' stage of the retirement journey, with the aim of helping customers to grow their pension savings. Then as customers get closer to retirement, the amount of money invested in riskier assets gradually reduces in order to provide stability in customers' savings. No matter where customers are in their retirement journey both risk management and diversification play a key role in My Future Focus.
Our dedicated investment manager Aviva Investors
My Future Focus (with the exception of the My Future Focus Annuity Fund which invests in the L&G (PMC) Future World Annuity Aware Fund) is managed by Aviva Investors, our dedicated fund manager. The investment team at Aviva Investors can invest with conviction, using tactical asset allocation to express their views on what's happening in markets and where they see value. Find out more about Aviva Investors and also tactical asset allocation below.
Designed to give customers choice in how they take their savings
With My Future Focus, customers can choose how they take their pension savings at retirement; as an annuity, as a cash lump sum, or as income drawdown. Alternatively, customers can stay invested in the 'Universal' strategy if they have not yet decided how to take their pension savings. Read more about how this works in the My Future Focus investment guide.
We care about our customers and also the planet and the world we live in. ESG - environmental, social and governance factors are integrated across My Future Focus. Learn more about this below.
The value of a pension can go down as well as up, so employees could get back less than has been paid in.
Why Choose us?
Strong governance
Governance plays a key role in the management of My Future Focus. We need to be sure that the funds, which make up the solution, are performing as expected and if not understand why and what can be done to improve performance. Find out more about Aviva's structured governance process in the brochure below:
Multi-asset expertise
Aviva Investors is a global asset manager covering equities, fixed income and real assets. Multi-asset investing, which is central to the management of the My Future Focus solution, has been at the heart of Aviva Investors for more than 30 years - the Multi-Asset Funds team manages more than ￡100 billion (end December 2023) in assets for a global network of clients. In addition, Aviva Investors has the capabilities in place to support a sustainable transition to a low-emissions future.
Tactical Asset Management in My Future Focus
We look at the My Future Focus strategy from a strategic asset allocation perspective to ensure the funds meet their long-term objectives. The solution also benefits from tactical asset allocation where Aviva Investors regularly assesses the market and makes changes to the asset allocation to exploit short-term investment opportunities.
Sustainability
Our commitment to sustainbility, as reflected by Aviva's 20-year track record in this space, and the significant resources that we devote to to this area, runs throughout My Future Focus. We believe that as an investor in businesses all over the world and as a major pension provider, we have a duty to build on our track record as a sustainable investor, and to use our resources and expertise to try to deliver long-term sustainable returns for our customers.
We also believe that as a steward of people’s money, we have a responsibility to act on the issues facing the world today from including climate change and social injustices. That’s why sustainability is integrated across My Future Focus.
A dedicated inhouse team of more than 50 analysts is central to the My Future Focus sustainability story. Our analysts’ research and insight into environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, which plays a crucial role in the My Future Focus investment team, helping to shape any investment decisions, as well as their targeted voting and engagement work. This research and insight feeds directly into the actively managed funds in My Future Focus. Meanwhile, the regional equity index tracker funds are optimised to have a higher ESG score and a lower carbon intensity reduction pathway than their respective benchmarks, as we believe this could help improve long-term risk-adjusted performance.
Our engagement work with businesses and key stakeholders is also key
We focus on engaging with companies and countries we invest in to drive long-term value for our customers. We are active owners and lenders, using our voice to drive change on three themes - People, Climate and Earth - through dedicated engagement programmes. Our corporate engagement routinely takes the form of meetings or calls with the board or senior sustainability executives, as well as collaborative initiatives. We also take a holistic approach to stewardship, engaging players from across the value chain. For example, one of our strategies to help reduce carbon emissions is to engage sector value chains in hard-to-abate sectors, such as transport and heavy-duty chemicals.
We've been holding a series of roundtables to convene some of the world's biggest carbon emitters from across their value chain to share an understanding of the key barriers to decarbonisation and identify how these challenges could be overcome.
My Future Focus is also aligned with the Aviva baseline exclusions policy. We therefore exclude a specific and limited number of sectors and economic activities where we consider the sustainability risks to the climate, planet and people to be so severe that providing equity and debt funding to such areas is fundamentally misaligned with our sustainability approach.
For instance, the solution does not invest in companies and sectors that generate prescribed levels of revenue from controversial weapons and civilian firearms; those involved in unconventional fossil fuels (arctic oil and oil sands); tobacco producers and distributors; thermal coal.
ESG integration means the integration of ESG factors and consideration of sustainability risk as part of the investment decision-making process. This process is applied beyond any specific binding constraints (in the objective or strategy of the fund as detailed in the prospectus or investment management agreement and in accordance with our Baseline Exclusions Policy). The investment manager retains discretion on decision-making taking all risks into account, beyond any binding criteria.
Useful information
Although we use ESG criteria when choosing areas for investments, it is important to note that ESG is different to sustainability labels.
Sustainability labelling has been introduced to facilitate sustainability comparisons between different investment funds. Sustainability labels are independently assessed and an addition to Aviva ESG criteria.
Meet the My Future Focus investment team
With the exception of the My Future Focus Annuity Fund, the My Future Focus funds are managed by the Aviva Investors' Multi-Asset Funds team, Aviva’s dedicated asset manager. Read more about the key members of the team below.
Sunil Krishnan
Head of Multi-asset Funds
Sotirios Nakos
Fund Manager - Multi-asset