Automatic National Insurance Credits at Age 60 (for Women) no longer exist ?

giverny

I'm trying to help my wife plan her state pension contribution shortfalls - with the various changes, she will now get state pension in 2018 aged 64 with 26 years credit (she no longer works).

Older forecasts she had, stated she would get automatic NI credits from age 60 onwards (for 4 years). More recent information makes no mention of this and it seems that as part of the change to reduce the number of qualifying years to 30, the auto credits for women has been withdrawn (although it still seems to apply for men born up to Oct 1954).

It seems therefore we will need to pay an additional 4 years Class 3 to get her full state pension if we choose to do this (obviously before April 2009 to get best value).

If I have understood this correctly, then I wonder how many other women out there are incorrectly assuming the automatic credits from age 60 still applies ? The government don't seem to have published this very well ?

jancee_2

No, it seems this was dropped as the reduction from 39 to 30 qualifying years more than compensated.

Though your wife has to wait until 64 her 26 / 30 is worth much more than 26 / 39. Or even if she had got the four auto credits she would only have been at 30 / 39. So it's a better deal for her. Paying for four years gets a full pension in scenario one but only 35 / 39 in scenario two.

getting-sorted-sarah

Automatic credits were just paid to men over 60, to help even up the inequality of women being eligible for pension at 60. It looks like an oversight to have included them in previous forecasts but it makes sense to remove them from everyone now that the rules have changed. As jancee says, your wife is better off under the new calculations.

giverny

Thanks for the responses.

I wasn't posting on a question of fairness, more a lack of information on the part of DWP / HMRC that this automatic credit process was apparently removed for women as part of the 2007 pension reforms, but you will have great difficulty finding details of this change on any official websites. Men still get the credit if born before Oct 1954.

Older versions of the BR19 leaflet quite clearly stated that this automatic credit would be applied to women from age 60 onwards (if born after 5/10/1950) and this was also stated on the HMRC website as recently as 2008 (I just happen to have kept a hard copy of the relevent HMRC web page dated 29/06/08).

Certainly we didn't realise that these credits had been removed as part of the 2007 reforms until we got an up to date forecast received today and investigated further, so could quite easily have missed the chance to buy extra years before the rates increase this April. I suspect other women may not be aware of this either. Trying to understand the detail of all the pension reforms and what/whether to buy extra years is a nightmare !!