These days there’s no such thing as a career for life. You might change jobs several times in your working life, and it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of the details of pension’s schemes you’ve joined. Likewise, if a former employer has merged with another organization, been acquired by someone else or changed its trading name, it may not be immediately apparent who the appropriate person is to contact. There are millions of pounds tied up in pension schemes that are “lost”.
The first thing to do if you think you may have a “lost pension”, is write down a timeline, with details of who you worked for, and when. Take details from copies of your old curriculum vitae, to get specific dates. Then see if you can contact the former employers direct. If you have access to the Internet, why not look up the former employer’s details on Companies House? Anyone with a credit or debit card can purchase copies of accounts that have been filed online. Or a less technical approach to your search would be to ask any former colleagues you still have contact with whether there was a pension scheme in operation. A few decades ago some employers were so paternalistic that there employees may not have appreciated the deductions being made for their contributions.
Do not worry about a negative response from your former employer when you contact them. As administrators of pension schemes they are likely to have an obligation as a trustee to keep your monies separate from the general company’s funds. No doubt any lost funds are an irritation for a company accountant, who will be glad to hear from you and close his file on the matter of the missing pension beneficiary!
It can be difficult to find out what happened to previous employers – particularly if you have moved out of the geographical area and the firm was a small one. Perhaps you will have to pass the detective work to someone else.
Pension Tracing Service
That’s why the Department of Work and Pensions has set up the Pension Tracing Service. There’s no guarantee that you will be entitled to receive any benefits, but at least the body should be able to put you in touch with the people or organization who currently administer the pension scheme of which you are a member. The Pension Tracing Service has access of over 200,000 pensions, so they already have plenty of places to start.
Even if you have lost your old paperwork relating to the pension, the Pension Tracing Service (PTS) can still make a free search with the following information:
- Whether you were a member of a personal or occupational scheme.
- Your former employer’s name and address
- The type of business they were involved in.
- If a personal scheme, the name of the insurance company who administered it.
The PTS has a standard form to fill in, which (according to their website) takes about 15 minutes to fill in. This may sound daunting, but it could be argued that it’s a small price to pay if they can find your missing pension.
You may come across some private agencies who will charge you a fee for finding your lost pension. It is difficult to imagine where else they might look apart from the PTS and the techniques described above, so before you turn to them, perhaps the PTS is the best idea.
