The main changes we’re making are:

• Introducing a three-phased approach to the lifestyle strategies, to help you understand where you are on your journey to retirement. These three phases will be growth, transition, and retirement.
• Shortening the de-risking period from 25 years to 15 years, bringing our lifestyle strategies more in line with other similar pension plans, and improving expected outcomes for members in retirement. This will mean that some members who had started de-risking will now come out of that phase and be moved into the “growth” phase.
• Improving the asset allocation in the de-risking period. This will aim to enhance the risk and return profile for the new transition phase.
• Improving the asset allocation in the “at retirement” phase of the Drawdown Lifestyle Strategy. Again, this will aim to enhance the risk and return profile of the “at retirement” phase of the Drawdown Lifestyle Strategy.
• Renaming the Cash Lifestyle Strategy as the Lump Sum Lifestyle Strategy.

The Trustee is responsible for determining the investment options available to members in the Plan. With support from its professional advisers, the Trustee monitors the investment options on an ongoing basis.

Our previous lifestyle strategies have tended to be more conservative than most other pension plans like ours. Following a review we feel it’s appropriate to place more emphasis on growth by shortening the de-risking period from 25 to 15 years, as well as making some other minor changes.

The changes have been agreed following an extensive review and with your best interests in mind. With so many of our members using our lifestyle strategies, it’s important to try to cater for a range of needs and priorities, and we think the changes do that.

Lifestyle strategies are investment pathways that aim to take account of different savings priorities throughout your career.

In the early and middle parts of your career, we expect your priority to be growth. Your account is therefore invested primarily in assets such as equities, which are expected to deliver better long-term growth, although have a higher risk of short-term drops in value. As retirement approaches, we expect your priority to be protection – i.e. preserving the value of the money you’ve saved. Your account is therefore shifted to be invested primarily in assets such as bonds or cash, which are not expected to grow as much in the long run, but are also less likely to suddenly lose value. This shift is called de-risking, and happens automatically.

The blackout period will run from 13 September to 4 October.

During this time, you will not be able to make any changes to your investment allocation or begin a new transfer or retirement process.

The changes involve disinvesting members’ savings from one set of funds and reinvesting elsewhere. In order to make sure we can do that accurately and efficiently, we need to make sure there aren’t other changes going on at the same time – that’s why we need to impose a blackout period. We’re keeping it as short as possible and will write to you to let you know when the changes are complete and the blackout has been lifted.

If you have an application in process during the blackout period and would like to confirm its status, please contact the Plan administrator.

If you make a request to retire or transfer your benefits during the blackout period, the Plan administrator will log this case and contact you after the blackout period has ended to continue with your application.

No, you don’t have to do anything. All investment switches will be processed automatically.

However, it’s important to understand the changes and how they might affect you. We therefore recommend that you do two things:

1. Read the information we’ve sent you so that you understand the personal impact of these changes.
2. Visit the member portal to check your Target Retirement Date (TRD) and see how your account is currently invested.

As investment options are subject to change from time to time, we recommend regularly checking your investment choices and your TRD on the member portal to make sure they remain suitable for your circumstances.

The Trustee is responsible for determining the investment options available to DC members, these changes are based on the current options available in the Plan. You should refer to the website for information about the investment options that are available.

There is no direct cost to you as a result of the investment changes, although there may be some indirect transaction costs associated with buying and selling the underlying investments in the funds. The actual amount (if any) is only known after the investments are traded. We have considered the impact of these costs with our investment advisers and believe the long-term benefits of introducing the new funds outweigh the potential costs associated with making the changes.

The changes to the lifestyle strategies will go ahead in September, so if you’re invested in one of them at that point, any investment switches that apply in your case will happen automatically.

However, if you don’t think the new arrangements are a good fit for you, you can opt to come out of the lifestyle strategy and follow a freestyle (also known as self-select) route. That means you’re responsible for managing your own investments and making any switches yourself if you want to react to changes in personal circumstances or economic conditions.

You can read more about the freestyle option here.

If you’re thinking about making a significant change to your account, we recommend seeking independent financial advice. If you don’t already have an independent financial adviser (IFA), MoneyHelper can help you to find one.

For general questions about your TotalEnergies pension, read the website or contact the Plan Administrator. Please note that neither the Trustee nor the Administrator are authorised to give you financial advice.