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Wednesday 05 August 2015 9:53 am

Lloyds, GSK and Vodafone: The 10 shares pension drawdown investors are buying up

By: Emma Haslett

Four months after pension savers were given freedoms allowing them to withdraw their savings and invest it into other areas, they have yet to spend their pension pots on those Ferraris everyone was worried about when the freedoms were first announced. 

Or that's according to financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown, anyway, which has listed the top shares pension savers are putting their cash into instead. At the top is Lloyds Banking Group, which has a 4.5 per cent share of drawdown customers' portfolios, with pharma giant GSK and mobile provider Vodafone both close behind.

Hargreaves Lansdown suggested drawdown investors were stocking up on Lloyds "in anticipation of the dividends to come". Analysts expect a divi of 3p per share in 2015 and 4p per share in 2016, which would mean yields of 3.6 per cent and 4.8 per cent respectively. 

The company added that pension savers are likely to feature heavily when the government sells more of its stake in the bank over the next few months.

"Given the existing popularity of Lloyds, we would expect a great deal of demand for this sale from drawdown investors, seeing as it will have a sweetener attached in the form of a discount to the market price and most likely some bonus shares attached too."

What's clear is that investors are being eminently sensible with their cash.

"There is clearly an appetite for growth, as well as income," said Laith Khalaf, a senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

"[It] suggests investors are saving some of their jam for tomorrow, as well as using their pension pot to produce an income today."

So no Ferraris yet – although with the supercar manufacturer having filed for a US IPO, Ferrari shares might not be that bad a call…