Big names among poor pension providers

Some of the biggest names in UK financial services feature in a list of the worst performing pension funds compiled by money analysis website howmuchdoineedtoretire.co.uk. Abbey, Friends Provident, Scottish Life and Clerical Medical occupy the bottom four places when it comes to pension fund performance over the past 10 years, the website said.

HSBC, Lloyds banking group and Barclays also feature in the bottom 10. Savers have an estimated £18bn invested in the worst 10 performing pension funds, the research found. Matthew Morris of howmuchdoineedtoretire.co.uk says that the poor performance of such high-profile pension providers is more than a blip. "They have been nearly always below average over each of the past 10 years and yet they all have more than £1bn invested" he said. "It is staggering that these big firms are able to perform so badly and yet continue to hold a strong position in the pensions market. If these were football teams, they would have been relegated by now."

However, financial advisers say that pension funds are long-term investments designed to produce returns over 20 or 30 years; merely taking a snapshot of performance at one period of time can be misleading.