Addaction offers flexible retirement plan

Addaction is one of the UK’s largest specialist drug and alcohol treatment charities, managing more than 120 services in 80 locations in England and Scotland. It has an annual income of more than £41 million.

In 2007, the charity arranged a flexible retirement plan through The Pensions Trust, which now has 1,200 members.

Then, in March 2013, it moved onto The Pensions Trust’s new SmarterPensions platform for qualifying workplace pension schemes in the auto-enrolment market. This uses AllianceBernstein’s target date funds as the default in an attempt to ensure a more flexible proactive investment approach for members, enabling them to adapt to the changing economic climate.

The funds carry an annual management charge of 0.45% across most of the fund range. Ethical fund options, including ethical target date funds, are offered using the FTSE4GoodFunds index range and gilts to create the required investment mix.

Guy Pink, HR director at Addaction, says: “For six years, we have used The Pensions Trust to run our defined contribution (DC) pension scheme. The regular contact we have gives us the confidence that this is well-managed and run with sound financial and legal governance.”

The charity was one of the first organisations to be rolled into the new flexible target date fund DC scheme.