This is the principle of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Diversification helps reduce risk by spreading investments across different regions, types and size of company – the idea is that if one type of investment goes down in value, the others won’t necessarily fall as well or may even go up in value.

Each Retiready Solution invests in a mix of different investment types (company shares, government and corporate bonds, cash and commercial property from the UK and overseas). The amount of risk that each Retiready Solution is exposed to is in part determined by this mix of investments. The higher the risk level, the more a Retiready Solution is likely to hold in riskier types of investments, like company shares, for example. While those aligned to a lower risk level will tend to hold more in less risky bonds and cash.

If the added safeguard is not triggered, then each Retiready Solution will be invested fully in the diversified portfolio appropriate to the level of risk it’s targeting.

Each Retiready Solution incorporates an added risk management safeguard which is designed to cushion the fund from the worst of the falls in the event of a sudden and sustained market drop like we saw during the credit crunch, although there's no guarantee it will do so.

In simple terms, it works by triggering a 'de-risking' event when the funds’ volatility’* breaches a certain pre-defined limit.  This de-risking involves removing 20%** from the diversified portfolio and putting it into safer investments like cash. The de-risk trigger is higher for the higher risk Retiready Solutions. 

When market volatility comes down to within the acceptable level for that solution the fund will gradually start 're-risking' which means it will start to move out of safer investments and into the diversified portfolio again until it's fully invested. It does this more gradually in steps of 5%** at a time.

* By ‘volatility’ we mean the extent to which an investment’s value goes up and down. Historically, company shares (also known as equities) have been more volatile than government or corporate bonds (loans issued by governments and companies which pay interest). 

**BlackRock may choose to use its discretion to de-risk or re-risk by amounts other than those stated.

The added safeguard is designed to cushion the impact of extreme and sustained market falls, not to prevent falls altogether. In certain circumstances, the Retiready Solutions may miss out on potential growth that similar funds without the safeguard benefit from because they:

• re-risk gradually, making them slower to react if markets bounce back quickly.
• can de-risk when markets are growing, if volatility is high.