PHARMACEUTICALS worker Gary Pritchard wasn’t expecting a luxurious retirement, but after finding almost £100,000 in lost savings with an “effortless” tool he’s now planning to travel the world.
Gary, 56, from Coventry, was starting to think about his retirement plans last year when it dawned on him that he had no idea where to find his old pensions from earlier in his career.
But after finding an app that could help him track his old pension pots down, he’s now a staggering £100,000 better off in retirement than he expected.
Gary is one of millions of workers estimated to have “lost” thousands of pounds of hard-earned pension savings after losing track of the paperwork.
In fact, research earlier this year by provider PensionBee found one in 10 workers believe they’ve lost a pot worth £10,000 or more – equivalent to more than three million people.
Around £50billion worth of savings is estimated to be missing in total.
Gary started getting together all the paperwork he had for his pensions when he realised he must have far more pensions than the paperwork he could find.
He had worked a number of different factory jobs when he was younger before moving into pharmaceuticals, but had no idea which pensions he had paid into.
“I knew I must have several old pensions knocking around, but a lot of them were from a long time ago and I couldn’t remember who they were with,” Gary said.
“The firms were probably sending letters to places I lived decades ago. I should have sorted it out sooner but I just kept ignoring it and thinking I’d deal with it later.”
TRACKING THEM DOWN
Realising he didn’t even know where to begin going about looking for his lost savings, Gary searched online for a way to track them down and came across Penny – an app that helps trace them for you.
Penny said it could help him find his old pensions with just the name of employer and the dates he worked for them – he wouldn’t need his policy details or the name of his pension provider.
“I could remember all my employers’ names, so I just got in touch with Penny and handed those over as well as my National Insurance number and my name, and they said to leave it with them.”
It took a couple of weeks, but then Gary stared receiving regular notifications from the Penny app letting him know it had found an old pension.
“It was like winning the lottery every time, I’d see the notification ping on my phone saying Penny had found thousands of pounds and I just couldn’t believe it,” Gary said.
“We think we’ve found all my old pensions now, and I actually miss the buzz of getting those alerts.”
Some pensions he found included a pot worth £11,000 with Scottish Widows from a job in his twenties, while a whopping £59,000 pot was found from a factory job he started when he was just 16 years old.
He has now recovered 11 pension pots he had lost track of in total.
“I’ve changed jobs a lot in my career as I’ve worked a lot of contracts, so I kept getting notifications saying they’d found a pot here and a pot there, but the £59,000 from when I was so young really wowed me,” Gary said.
COMBINING THE POTS
Gary is now in the process of consolidating all his small pension pots into one place.
Consolidating your pensions is where you combine all your pension into one new pot.
There are a number of potential benefits to doing this, including paying one lower fee rather than lots of different charges on different pensions, and being able to keep track of them more easily.
Older pensions tend to come with higher admin charges as a cap on fees for workplace pensions was only introduced in 2015, and these fees can eat away at your savings.
Gary said: “Penny is moving all my money into one pot that I can now access online. I’ve even been playing around with changing the funds the money is invested in.
“It’s super easy and I hardly had to do any of the work myself, it was pretty effortless. Everyone should do this,” he added.
Why are pensions going missing?
When you join a company, you are “automatically enrolled into its workplace pension scheme.
If you then move jobs, you’re enrolled into a new company pension.
This has created a situation where many workers are juggling multiple pensions and there are concerns millions of Brits may have forgotten about some of their older pots.
If you lose the paperwork for your old schemes and forget which provider they are with, it can be difficult to track them down.
The Government is working on a number of ways to help resolve this problem.
One of those is the beleaguered “pensions dashboard” – a facility where workers will be able to view all of the pension pots they have accumulated over their lifetime in one place.
After years of delays, pension schemes will have to be hooked up to this dashboard by October 31 2026.
The Government also recently confirmed it intends to push ahead with “pot for life” plans – as revealed by The Sun.
These proposals could include workers maintaining one pension provider throughout their career, or having a pension pot that follows them around from job to job.
PLANS FOR RETIREMENT
Gary doesn’t have firm plans for his retirement yet, and doesn’t want to give up work completely.
However, he said finding the £100,000 has added a lot of security and he now feels empowered to take a sabbatical and travel the world before returning and working part time.
“Even if I don’t use the money for anything specific, I think it was worth finding just for the knowledge that if anything happened to me, my wife would get it and she would be more secure,” he said.
HOW DOES PENNY WORK?
Penny is a Bristol-based app which is helping savers trace their lost pension pots to give them a much-needed boost in retirement.
You need to hand over your name, NI number and any details you have about your old jobs such as the name of your employer, the dates you worked and the name of your pension provider, if you have it.
The app then tracks down your old pots and automatically combines them into one new pot with Penny, where you can view your new pot on a dashboard on the app.
The app charges a 0.75% fee for managing your pension, but doesn’t charge any extra fees unless you choose to put your money in an “ethical fund”, in which case the charge is 0.78%.
If you decide to go down the route of tracking your old pensions and combining them into a new pot, make sure to ask whether you would be giving up any benefits by doing so.
Some pensions come with valuable benefits attached, such as a guaranteed income or a protected pension age of 55.
Other ways to track down your pensions
There are several other services available to help you track them down, including the government’s online Pension Tracing Service (or call 0800 731 0193).
Pension firm AJ Bell also has a service to locate old pension pots.
You can also try ringing your old employers’ HR department to ask for the details of your old pensions.
Provide information like the dates you were employed, as well as your National Insurance number.
Once you have found your old pensions, it may be worth consolidating them into one place so you can keep track of them more easily in future.
Putting all your money into one modern pension scheme could also mean you pay less in fees.
But check with your scheme you won’t lose any valuable benefits by transferring first.
How do I consolidate my pension?
IF you have several workplace pensions that you’re no longer paying into, you might be better off consolidating them into a single pot.
There are several advantages to this.
The first is that by having your savings all in one place, you’ll only pay one set of fees.
You can also choose which pension provider you want to transfer the different savings to, so you can pick the best one for you.
It also makes it easier to keep track of your money.
You might want to move all your money to whichever of your existing pots has the best fees, or you could move it all to your current employer pension (if you have one).
Alternatively, you may wish to move money to a private pension or use a consolidator service, such as Pension Bee, Aviva, or Wealthify.
Make sure you compare and contrast your options carefully so that you’re picking the best home for your savings.
You’ll need to look at fees but also might want to consider the investment options available.
If any of your pots are over £30,000 you’ll need to get independent financial advice, but even if you have lots of smaller pots you should consider speaking to an independent financial advisor (IFA).
You can use Unbiased or VouchedFor to find a recommended advisor near you.
Also ask whether you’ll be charged a fee to exit your existing provider and to join your new provider, plus whether the age at which you can access your pension is different – for most people this is currently 55, but is set to rise to 57.
You also need to ensure the pension you’re leaving doesn’t come with valuable added perks, or you could lose out.
Stay alert for pension transfer scams as fraudsters often target people transferring their pension with promises of investments that are too good to be true.
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