Pensions What does Nest do with 13 million savers' cash?

The £50bn workplace scheme invests in everything from tech firms, such as Tesla, to forests and windfarms. Rupert Jones reports

- Rupert Jones reports

More than 13 million people are in it, and it looks after £50bn of cash - but you may have never heard of it.

The National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) is the largest workplace pension scheme by member numbers, with more than a third of UK employees enrolled in it.

It's 20 years ago this year since a government commission recommended creating "a low-cost, national funded pension savings scheme" into which individuals would be "automatically enrolled".

That led to Nest being set up as a publicly owned body to invest people's pension savings.

Data shared with the Guardian reveals that, to date, some Nest members have almost tripled their money once you include employer contributions and investment returns.

That beats what they would have made from other savings products such as Isas.

We looked at what Nest is doing with your retirement savings.

What goes in

Nest was set up as a public corporation as part of the government's automatic enrolment revolution, described at the time as "the biggest shake-up in UK pensions for over 100 years" and designed to get millions more people paying into a pension.

Auto-enrolment requires all employers to automatically put eligible workers into a workplace pension where both parties pay money in.

It even applies to those employing just one person, such as some people who employ a nanny, carer or gardener.

The regime officially kicked off in 2012 and affects everyone in work aged between 22 and the state pension age who earns more than £10,000 a year and does not already have a suitable workplace pension.

Employers must choose a provider to run the scheme for them.

This provider takes the money and invests it to generate returns.

Big-name employers that are using, or have used, Nest to enrol at least some employees into a pension include the BBC, McDonald's and BT.