Assessing The your Fidelity Independent Workplace ...

The Independent Governance Committee's 2019 report

Assessing your Fidelity Workplace Pension

Acting

in

your

best

interests

The Independent Governance Committee's 2019 report

Dear pension plan member

One of the key roles of the Independent Governance Committee (IGC) is to ensure that your pension plan provides you with value for money. This is assessed using the criteria set out in our Value for Money framework.

The Value for Money Framework

When assessing Value for Money, we use the following criteria:

? The level and quality of the service that you receive - your customer experience

? The effectiveness of your pension plan's investment strategy

? The level and quality of benefits that you receive, compared to the contributions you make (improving inputs for better outcomes)

? The costs and charges that you pay

? The security of your investments

After reviewing these areas, and comparing them to the charges you pay, we have concluded that overall Fidelity offers you value for money.

There are some areas where we think Fidelity has met or exceeded our expectations:

? There is a strong customer focus in Fidelity. The quality of interaction is good and where issues have previously been flagged by members and the IGC, process improvements over the past year have been made.

? Fidelity's robust fund governance ensures that the funds you are invested in are closely monitored and perform in line with their objectives.

? There is a process in place to ensure default investment strategies are regularly reviewed to ensure they are appropriate.

? The charges are simple in structure and there are no exit charges if you choose to leave your Fidelity Plan.

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Assessing your Fidelity Workplace Pension

There are some areas that we will be working with Fidelity on in the coming year to enhance your experience:

? Continued monitoring of the changes being made to Fidelity's systems, as well as enhancements to their digital experience.

? Making costs and charges easy to understand and collecting information on all investment costs from managers.

? Ensuring the way Fidelity engages with you about your pension is timely and relevant to your circumstances.

? Seeking your views on how we should make allowances for sustainable investment within the investment funds provided by your pension plan.

Where can I find out more?

We have created another short video for you this year, focusing on the results of our value for money assessment. You can watch this here.

All of our previous reports and videos, together with profiles of all the IGC members, can be found on our dedicated pages at Fidelity's website, here.

How can I get in touch with the IGC?

We're always happy to hear from you and we use your feedback to inform our conversations and proposed activities with Fidelity. If you'd like to get in touch, you can do so in a number of ways:

By email: Fidelityigcchair@

By post: Fidelity IGC Chair, PTL, Park House, Park Square East,

Leeds LS1 2PW

Kim Nash Chair, Independent Governance Committee April 2019

Don't forget!

You can check your Fidelity pension plan at any time using Fidelity's online transactional hub, PlanViewer, where you'll also find a wide range of tools and calculators, helping you to plan for retirement.

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IGC REPORT 20197

Introduction

Kim

Rachel

David

hel

Kim

Daniel

Daniel

d

Rachel

Kim

Paul

As Chair of the Fidelity Independent Governance Committee (IGC), I am delighted to present to you our 2019 report.

Since 2015, every insurance company providing pension plans is required by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to establish an IGC.

The IGC's role is to:

? act in members' best interests, and

? assess whether or not your pension plan provides you with value for money.

This report provides information on our assessment of Value for Money, as well as an update on the changes to your pension plan that we have been working on with Fidelity. We have structured the Report differently to previous reports and cover each area assessed under our Value for Money Framework. There is also a short video to explain our findings.

The IGC's remit covers Fidelity's Group Personal Pension (GPP) and stakeholder products

We look after the interests of

260,000

members...

...with

?9.0 billion

of retirement savings...

...across

184

different pension plans

Each pension plan will be established to meet each employer's requirements, with differing contribution amounts being paid in and often with different investment strategies.

To assess the Value for Money you receive from your pension plan, the IGC monitors the performance of Fidelity and those who manage the funds your pension savings are invested in, against the costs that you are charged by them. We use this information to challenge Fidelity to make improvements to their service or products where necessary or required.

As Chair of the IGC, I meet with the Directors of the FIL Life Insurance Limited Board (referred to as the Fidelity Board within this report) to set out the areas where improvements are needed and where we believe Fidelity is performing well.

The IGC is made up of five members, three of whom are

Paiunldependent of Fidelity. During the year one of the Fidelity

nominated members, Julian Webb, stood down from the IGC and has been replaced by Daniel Smith. Daniel is Head of UK Full Service - Workplace Investing at Fidelity and is responsible for leading the overall management of Fidelity's workplace businesses in the UK. Given Daniel's role within Fidelity, he is in a position to ensure that the Independent Members are provided with all of the necessary support and information to undertake

Danieltheir roles effectPivaeluy.lDetails on each member of the IGC and

their skills and experience are included on page 25. For more information on the members of the Fidelity IGC and to understand a bit more about what we do, please watch this IGC Video.

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Value for money

IGC REPORT 2019

For a pension plan to offer good value we expect it to meet certain standards across a broad spectrum of activities. These standards are set out in our Value for Money framework. We review the features of the Fidelity pension plans against our expectations and set out where we think Fidelity is performing better than expected or where certain areas aren't meeting our expectations. Member research was carried out in 2016 and this helped in the building of our framework.

In determining value for money the IGC assesses: ? The level and quality of the service that you receive - your customer

experience ? The effectiveness of your pension plan's investment strategy ? The level and quality of benefits that you receive, compared to the

contributions you make (improving inputs for better outcomes) ? The costs and charges that you pay ? The security of your investments

A summary of our Value for Money framework is included later in this report in Appendix A and we provide details on customer experience, investment strategy, improving inputs for better outcomes and costs and charges within this report. There are no current actions related to security of investments this year.

We have concluded that taking all of these factors into account your Fidelity pension plan continues to offer you value for money.

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