Nest has unintentionally been overstating its annualised investment performance by 0.3 per cent, presenting returns as net when they should have been presented as gross.
The error, which the provider has recently identified, relates to documents targeted to financial advisers and employee benefits consultants, but has not impacted communications to members.
Nest’s fund factsheet with data to end of September 2018 reported the since-inception annualised total net performance of its 2040 Retirement Date Fund at 9.9 per cent when the net figure was instead around 9.6 per cent. Nest says the figure is still above the fund’s objective over this period of 5.0 per cent. Its five-year annualised performance for younger savers to Q3 2018 is 10.5 per cent and not 10.8 per cent, just ahead of the Corporate Adviser Pensions Average (CAPA) of 10.1 per cent.
Nest says it has put in place stronger controls to ensure performance data is correctly labelled and cross-checked against unit prices. It has also placed explanations about the error on the Nest website and updated and corrected its factsheets.
Nest director of investment development and delivery Paul Todd says: “We recognise this error falls below our high standards and we’re clearly disappointed it happened. We’ve already enhanced our controls to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.
“We can confirm this error has had no impact on members’ savings, or on the information they have received via their annual benefit statements or online accounts.”
