Pension House Exchange - legit?

thecornflake

Hi,

I was contacted via LinkedIn by someone who claims to work for a company called pension house exchange, who trace lost pensions for people. Given that I’m struggling to locate 2 previous pensions I was interested in their supposed free service but thought I’d do some digging first. I’m still not sure, this could be a genuine company who just make commission putting people in touch with actual pension admin companies after finding pensions. Here’s what I found so far -

When visiting their website a pop up says to be clear they aren’t anything to do with a similar named company. That other company is legit, as an actual fca registered pension company. Also there’s a record on the fca site of the company having been cloned previously although the details don’t fit this other company that contacted me.

The company aren’t fca registered, and on companies house their business type is listed as market research/opinion polling.

Looking at their address on street view they have a pretty tiny office above some shops although that’s not an issue in itself I guess.

I told the lady who contacted me I wanted to do some more checking and she was fine with it, again this doesn’t prove anything either way but in my experience people either drop contact or start getting pushy if they aren’t genuine and you start asking questions.

As I assume they’re going to want NI number etc to find pensions I’m wary, and I haven’t come across any other companies offering this. I can see the business model of putting in the work of tracing pensions and then hopefully getting a return by passing them over to another company although they’ll probably struggle as I’ve spent 2 years trying to trace these pensions writing to over 20 companies with no luck so far.

Any thoughts/advice? I could do some further digging if I could be bothered, there’s other potential information I could get with legal open source intelligence techniques if I can be bothered to spend the time doing it.

Edit: Further digging shows this company are affiliated to another company called gpi Europe who look like a financial company linked to Slovakia and who seem to do a lot around investment management based in the Isle of Man for beneficial tax reasons.

aldershot

https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details

Seems a better bet than some random cold call. You’ve answered your own question in your post IMHO.

Silvertabby

aldershot is right. These claims companies don't have access to some magic database - they'll probably use the gov.uk one (which is why they will want your NI number) and charge you for doing something you can do yourself.

If you don't get any joy with the database, can you post details of your employers/pension schemes and dates of service? Someone on here may have heard of them.

OldMusicGuy

Just do it yourself rather than risk being scammed. Use the government database or just call the original employers. I did this to check on a pension from my first employer back in the 70s. It was Amoco then, now falls under the BP pension scheme. I called the BP scheme and they were able to give me all the information I needed even though I left the company in 1982.

Brynsam

thecornflake wrote: »

Given that I’m struggling to locate 2 previous pensions I was interested in their supposed free service but thought I’d do some digging first. I’m still not sure, this could be a genuine company who just make commission putting people in touch with actual pension admin companies after finding pensions.

Pension administrators don't pay commission. If they are looking for members (and in many cases they don't have to - the onus may be on the member to claim their pension, or the rules of the scheme may stipulate there will be one letter sent to the last address on file), they pay an upfront search fee to a recognised tracing service, who will use various publicly accessible databases to carry out their searches.

Are you sure you have pension benefits to find? If you could give your age and your dates of employment with these companies as accurately as you can remember, that would be helpful - ditto the names of your employers, as someone else has suggested.

JoeCrystal

How very odd for AJM2019's first post to support Pension House Exchange and on such an old thread.

molerat

JoeCrystal wrote: »

How very odd for AJM2019's first post to support Pension House Exchange and on such an old thread.

Their post has been deleted once so they spam again. Does that look like the actions of a legitimate trustworthy financial organisation.

JoeCrystal

molerat wrote: »

Their post has been deleted once so they spam again. Does that look like the actions of a legitimate trustworthy financial organisation.

Indeed, AJM2019 actually admitted that they are Admin Team from the Pension House Exchange and not following the terms and conditions of this forum either.

midlandsimon

Avoid at all costs. Any unsolicited and unauthorised firm should not be contacting you.