Locating A Company Pension

Mark_Hoque

I am having huge problems finding a company pension I paid into for sixteen years . The company went into liquidation in 1992 and I was made redundant . I had already transferred a pension from another company into this one and in the course of trying to find out what happened contacted that company who still hold records to say my pension with them was transferred to the company that took over. In 1988.

. I started with the pension tracing scheme who gave me the name and phone number of an insurance provider the scheme was held with . Whilst they agreed they held the fund they denied that my name was on the group list . I went down the route of phoning various other companies that I was told held the fund beforehand with no success . I also wrote to the insurance company head office .

Then I contacted the citizens advice centre who suggested using the companies complaint email first , followed by regulator and ombudsman . This I did .

I received a letter back from the insurance company who stated that they held he group policy from 2002 after the trustees wound it up but that the trustees didn't put my name on the list . They included the name of the trustees that dealt with it . After an internet search I found a phone number and phoned them only to be told they had been taken over by another company . I was told someone would phone back but when this didn't happen phoned again ( many times ) .

In the meantime I contacted all the relevant agencies via email , the pension advisory service , pension protection fund , the regulator and the ombudsman but it seems none of them can help or else point back to people I have already contacted . The regulator suggests I use the internal dispute resolution procedure of the pension scheme but if the original company was wound up and the existing company deny I am a member what do I do ?

The fact is that I paid into the scheme , as did my employer for sixteen years so how can it have simply disappeared ?

Browntoa

To give thread a meaningful title

LHW99

1. Do you have it in writing from the company you transferred from (right at the beginning) confirming the transfer? Do you have any original paperwork from the next pension before the company itself went into liquidation? Do you know who the liquidators were?
IMO, that is probably the start point.
2. Can you now, after all your researches construct a complete timeline, of who held your pension and when (with the name as they were then, who took them over, and when and if they closed down, when that happened)? Preferably with as much writeen documentation as possible.
3. Can you get any documentation on the winding up of the 2002 scheme?
4. What was the response from the Ombudsman? If that was a first response, my understanding is that it may have come from someone in a lower position at the Ombudsman's Office, so it is well worth making an appeal, and supplying the timeline etc with your appeal request.

Hope you can make progress, but I do think you will have to be very organised, get as much paperwork, definate dates and policy numbers as you can find and keep pushing each section of the chain to try and get confirmation that you were included. If you can show that you were included at specific points in the past, but that someone forgot to add you during a transfer process, you should have a case to say "I was there, now put me back"

One last thought (and bear in mind I am no expert). Could there have been more than one scheme at the company that was wound up? Could you be in a separate scheme that was transferred elsewhere?

Mark_Hoque

I see your point ....just realised what I did ....oops :rotfl:

Mark_Hoque

Thankyou for the points you have brought up , some I hadn't thought of before . :beer: