National Pension Tracing Day calls on 27 October this year where we are urged to spend the extra hour gained from the clocks going back looking for our lost pensions.
With an estimated 2.8 million pension pots worth around £26.6bn lost in the system it could be an hour well spent. Even that tiny pension you lost track of early in your career could have grown to become a sizeable sum that could make a real difference to your retirement.
Losing a pension is easily done. We move around jobs and homes several times during our lives and if we don’t keep our contact details updated then we can easily lose track. However, help is at hand with a call to the government’s Pension Tracing Service.
It’s an important but underused service. A recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request showed that it received well over 276,000 calls since January 2019 and demand is growing. However, with millions of pensions lost, it’s clear the service is still barely scratching the surface of the issue. The advent of the much-delayed Pensions Dashboard will help but it is a few years away yet.
Read more: The hidden reasons we don’t do the right thing with our finances
All you need when you call is your employer name or else that of the pension provider. The service can’t tell you if you do have a pension with them or how much it is worth, but they can give you contact details.
Once you’ve tracked down your pensions it might make sense to consolidate them. This can cut down on time and admin and will give you a much clearer idea of how much you have, so you can plan with more certainty.
Think carefully before you consolidate. Some pensions might operate expensive exit fees if you transfer, or you might miss out on valuable benefits like guaranteed annuity rates. Take advice or guidance as necessary to make sure you come to the right decision for you.
Tips for tracking down lost pensions
Make a list of everywhere you have worked during your career so far and check to see if you have pension paperwork for all of them.
Talk to old colleagues to see whether they kept any of the paperwork. If you’re no longer in touch, LinkedIn can be a really useful place to find them.
If you have lost details of an old pension scheme, use the form on the government’s tracing service website. It won’t tell you how much is in the pension, but it will help you find contact details.
You need the name of the company you worked for, the name of the pension scheme, or the name of the pension provider.
You can call the Tracing Service on 0800 731 0193, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Whenever you move home, it is worth adding pension providers to the list of people you need to notify so they have updated contact details for you and you don’t miss out on important communications.
Read more
Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.