The first personal pension to offer both capital and income guarantees is due to be launched by MetLife Europe.

The Retirement Portfolio provides unique guarantees that protect investors against falling markets, lock in gains when markets rise and guarantee income for life.

The fully flexible personal pension drawdown plan allows investors to future-proof their savings by opting into guarantees when required. Through unit-linked guarantees, the portfolio includes an optional capital guarantee for those saving for retirement, a deferred income guarantee for investors looking to delay taking an income and an income guarantee for those seeking an immediate income.

All the guarantees offer 100 per cent performance lock-ins every three years and the product is available from age 23.

Ed Gardner, chief executive officer at MetLife Europe, says, ‘Retirement planning needs solutions that can tackle the uncertainty investors face. Unit-linked guarantees are set to expand rapidly in this changing market.

‘The risks from rising inflation, stock market volatility and the need to plan for potentially up to 30 years of retirement demonstrate the need for new solutions. We believe the new Retirement Portfolio delivers on all fronts and makes unit-linked guarantees a major part of mainstream retirement planning.’

MetLife’s Retirement Portfolio is fully flexible for retirement benefits, offering the ability to consolidate, take full drawdown, partial drawdown and phased drawdown. Investors can choose lump-sum death benefits if required and auto-fund rebalancing on selected funds.

Features include accepting protected rights; the ability to make transfers, regular and single contributions from employers and employees; and the ability to convert into a self-invested personal pension later on.

The minimum investment is £50,000, and investors have access to a range of MetLife best-of-breed and index funds, managed and index portfolios chosen with the assistance of independent investment research company Morningstar Associates Europe Limited.

Index portfolios have annual management charges starting from 0.2 per cent, and product charges depend on contributions but can be as low as 0.4 per cent.

For more information visit www.metlife.co.uk