“Lifestyling” is where a pension investment gradually, and automatically, moves from equities to fixed-interest as you reach retirement age. This is designed to reflect more closely the annuity rates that determine traditional pension income and, hopefully, will have the effect of lessening the investment risk to your retirement fund and securing the capital for the future.

Your plan to secure your retirement fund is spot-on and I would commend the strategy to many shortly-to-be retirees in what promises to be a particularly volatile period for investment markets. Most pension fund trustees would be delighted to obtain a return on their investments of more than six per cent over the last few years before retirement.

In fact, the most likely solution for your strategy is to switch into the money market investment fund offered by the company pension. Such an option is generally offered by company money purchase pension schemes. The fund manager will invest in a range of deposits and short-term treasuries (i.e. gilts) and these often produce a return at least equal to the competitive deposit  funds that savers can normally access with their own investments.

You should ask your pension scheme administrator for details of the funds in which you could invest and then switch your accumulated fund into the deposit fund that is available.

It is unlikely that a transfer into your SIPP would be appropriate. If you transfer out of your pension scheme, it is likely that you will lose the opportunity to accrue further payments in the scheme in the three years until retirement.

The deposit accounts that you mention can offer their highly competitive rates because of their very basic offerings to savings customers – for example, many of the highest rates are available to those investing via the internet. Trustees deposit accounts tend to be more costly to administrate, but I am not entirely sure why this should be so.