Paul Lewis
It is easy to forget about old pensions – until 1988 if a company had a scheme you had to pay into it and if you worked there for more than a couple of years your pension may well have been preserved for you.
Many personal pensions have been forgotten about too. Millions have been paid into since 1986. But people often pay in for a few years and then stop. So it is easy to lose the details or decide it is not worth worrying about. But it can be.
The Pension Tracing Service is dedicated to reuniting people with these lost funds. It has details of 200,000 schemes and every year it helps around 16,000 people track down lost pensions. It says that they get an average of £16 a week and a lump sum of £1900, though some have had lump sums as high as £20,000 and pensions of more than £100 a week. The service is free and run by the Department for Work and Pensions.
To find an old pension you will need to have at least some information. Start by making a list of where you worked and when. Firms change their names so it will help if you can remember any details about the address where you worked and what the company did. If you have any paperwork from the time so much the better. Try to be as accurate as you can about when you worked there.
Before 1975 people who left a job normally lost any rights to a pension. And even after that you may have given up those rights if you left within a few years. But it is well worth checking. And do not worry if you can’t remember whether you paid into the scheme or not. Sometimes it happens automatically and many people do not realise they are paying into a pension scheme.
If you are looking for a personal pension then it will help if you know the name of the firm that ran it for you or any name or address related to it. Again, any documents will be immensely helpful.
It will take a bit of work. But it could be a very profitable use of a couple of hours.
More information at www.direct.gov.uk – put pension tracing service in the search box - or phone 0845 6002 537.
Written by Paul Lewis, this article was first published on October 27, 2010. Paul's opinions are his own and for general information only. Always seek independent, professional, financial advice.