Lost track of your Pensions?

Monday, 4th July 2016 10:45 - by Lumin Wealth Management

Have you heard of the pension tracing service? A surprising number of people haven’t. Yet it is a useful resource to cope with one common problem created by changing jobs.

These days’ people average over 10 different jobs in their career. When they change employers, their pension will rarely move with them. As a result, people lose track of what pensions they have and where.

Without this information forecasting retirement income is made much more difficult.

The government is working towards improving the situation so that employees with a pension pot of £10,000 or more will automatically take this with them if they move jobs.

In the meantime, it’s up to individuals to track their own pensions.

This is where the Pension Tracing Service (PTS) comes in.

In February, the government tripled the funding for the PTS. This gives them the bandwidth of help track down former pension providers – as it did for 145,000 people last year.

The most common reason for having lost a pension pot was simply because former employees changed their address without notifying their previous employers.

If you’re trying to track down a personal pension and you know the provider then contact them and ask to receive information on the pension pot, checking they have an up to date address.

If you have a pension you should be receiving annual statements.

If you’re trying to track down a company pension, first contact the past employer and ask for the pension provider’s details.

Should neither of these two routes work, then the PTS may be able to help. They can search through more than 200,000 pension schemes to try and locate the contact details for you.

You can contact them on 0845 6002 537

Should you find any missing pension pots, then it is time to ask the usual questions around how much it is now worth, estimated income in retirement, charges, how it is being managed etc…