Smart Pension - How Sustainable are their 'Sustainable' Investments

What is Smart Pension?

Launched in 2015, Smart Pension is a pension investment platform. It exceeds £7 billion in Assets Under Management and serves over 1.5 million members and more than 90,000 employers.

Smart Pension has won awards for its investments which are ‘sustainable’ and ‘targeting net zero’, but does it live up to its reputation when you dig deeper?

Impact Investing

As an eco conscious ‘impact investor’ I like to do a lot of digging into potential investments to work out how ethical and sustainable they are. I am human so will make mistakes but to the best of my knowledge my investments are sound eco and ethical wise.

As I cannot choose my pension provider due to it being a work pension picked by my employer, I have set myself the task of picking investments that are as eco and ethical as they can be. As 8% (3% minimum salary deduction and 5% employer contribution) of my salary will be going into it each month, I feel it’s an important use of my time for my conscience and for the planet.

Although Smart Pension have other investments or ‘funds’ to choose from, I am narrowing this research down to the ones Smart Pensions have described as ‘fully sustainable’ in its press release on 23/1/2023.

It’s 3 ‘sustainable’ funds:

1. Smart Sustainable Growth Core Fund – Typical AMC 0.25% (aka CORE)

‘Aims to take advantage of Environmental, Social and Governance factors by investing more in companies which score well in these areas.’

2. Smart Sustainable Growth Fund –Typical AMC 0.30% (aka GROWTH)

‘As above, and aims to benefit people and the planet by having a moderate allocation to investments contributing to solutions for environmental and social issues.’

3. Smart Sustainable Growth Plus Fund – Typical AMC 0.50% (aka PLUS)

‘As above, and aims to benefit people and the planet by having a high allocation to investments contributing to solutions for environmental and social issues. This fund has the highest fund cost of these growth funds.’

For ease of use, I will refer to the above funds as 1) Core, 2) Growth and 3) Plus

too good to be true?

Spoiler alert: I was not happy with what I found after my research. Many of the top companies or ‘holdings’ I could find were unethical or unsustainable. Also after my best efforts for most I couldn’t find any information on what companies were included in the funds, which was super frustrating.

I have actually put in a complaint to Smart Pension over the lack of transparency with their funds and the fact they are misleading potential investors and participating in greenwashing. Transparency wise, the ongoing charges info (0.25, 0.3 and 0.5%) is not on the fact sheet for each of the funds, you have to go elsewhere to find that info. Also to the unassuming every day investor, it will appear as fully sustainable with the ‘sustainable’ titles of the funds and they may unwittingly invest in companies which have unsustainable business practices, which they may not have otherwise invested in.

Deep dive: 1) CORE, aka Smart Sustainable Growth Core Fund

This one has a reasonable ongoing charge of 0.25% AMC.

No data exists before 2024. The performance to 6/2024 was 17.1% and to 6/2025 was 5.1%.

As per the fact sheet, the funds within this investment includes:

60.2% Smart Pension Net Zero Pathway Custom Equity Index Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit
20% AMX UCITS CCF DWS Global Low Carbon Stewardship Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit
11.7% L&G Life CFAE Future World USD Corporate Bond GBP Hedged Fund
4.2% L&G Life CFAG Future World EUR Corporate Bond GBP Hedged Fund
4% L&G Life CCAT Future World GBP Corporate Bond Index Fund

Deep dive: 2) GROWTH, aka Smart Sustainable Growth Fund

This one has a reasonable ongoing charge of 0.3% AMC.

The performance to 6/2021 was 18.3%, to 6/2022 was -3.9%, to 6/2023 was 8.8%, to 6/2024 was 16.7% and to 6/2025 was 5.2%.

As per the fact sheet, the funds within this investment includes:

50.2% Smart Pension Net Zero Pathway Custom Equity Index Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit
20.1% AMX UCITS CCF DWS Global Low Carbon Stewardship Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit
9.9% MV Dual Credit Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit
9.9% Mirova Global Green Bond Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit
7% JPM ETF Carbon Transition Global Equity ETF – I wasn’t impressed, seeing on justETF that 26.57% of the funds top 10 companies on the ‘No Thanks’ app (boycott list to protest against the Palestine genocide): Nvidia (taking precious minerals via mining of our Earth), Apple (planned obsolescence into their devices), Microsoft (planned obsolescence into their devices), Amazon (wasteful production, unethical employee treatment, greed from CEO), Alphabet (aka Google, which is one of the highest users of AI which is responsible for unprecedented water usage), and Meta (aka Facebook, Instagram, with privacy issues, fake news, hate speech, and inactive in taking down reported scams).
3% AXA Biodiversity Fund – Assuming the fund is really called ‘AXA IM ACT Biodiversity Equity UCITS ETF USD Acc’, I was still unimpressed to see on justETF that 2.55% of the top 10 companies on the ‘No Thanks’ app (boycott list to protest against the Palestine genocide): Nvidia (taking precious minerals via mining of our Earth), and SAP (donated money to Israel employees after the ‘war’ started).

Deep dive: 3) Plus, aka Smart Sustainable Growth Plus Fund

This one has a slightly less reasonable ongoing charge of 0.5% AMC.

No data exists before 2024. The performance to 6/2024 was 11.8% and to 6/2025 was 3.5%.

As per the fact sheet, the funds within this investment includes:

30% AXA People & Planet Equity Fund – I wasn’t impressed, seeing on the Financial Times that 13.09% of the funds top 5 companies on the ‘No Thanks’ app (boycott list to protest against the Palestine genocide): Nvidia (taking precious minerals via mining of our Earth), Microsoft (planned obsolescence into their devices), and SAP (donated money to Israel employees after the ‘war’ started).
30% AMX UCITS CCF DWS Global Low Carbon Stewardship Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit
20% AXA Biodiversity Fund – Assuming the fund is really called ‘AXA IM ACT Biodiversity Equity UCITS ETF USD Acc’, I was still unimpressed to see on justETF that 2.55% of the top 10 companies on the ‘No Thanks’ app (boycott list to protest against the Palestine genocide): Nvidia (taking precious minerals via mining of our Earth), and SAP (donated money to Israel employees after the ‘war’ started).
10% MV Dual Credit Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit
10% Mirova Global Green Bond Fund – unable to find any info on the holdings (companies) within, so cannot verify sustainability merit

Conclusion

I am not very impressed by the funds. The funds are heavy with greenwashing and a lack of transparency. Its appalling that they have advertised the funds as ‘sustainable’ when the top 10 companies listed often have unsustainable business practices, including:

planned obsolescence; leading to unnecessary additional product waste
extraction of precious minerals from our Earth; which also have ethical concerns over child exploitation and fair pay and treatment of workers
unethical business practices, huge CEO pay and minimal worker pay

Overall, as I have no choice but to use one or more of the funds above for my pension, I aim to invest mostly in the Core and Growth ‘sustainable’ funds as they have lower ongoing charges ie the lesser evil. Whilst Smart Pension does have other funds on its platform, as they do not seem to have as much screening as the ‘sustainable’ funds, I will begrudgingly stick to opting for one or more of these 3 ‘sustainable’ funds.

Smart Pension overall has a great rating on Trustpliot, easy to use app, ability to combine pensions and change investments with click of a button. However I feel they really need to use words like ‘sustainability’ to describe funds that are just that – sustainable.

If Smart Pension provides a detailed breakdown of the holdings in each fund, as I have asked from them, I will share with you here on this blog post.

*Percentages correct at the time of writing.