SERPS

deliaderek

Partner opted out of serps in the 80’s whilst working for Royal Doulton who are no longer trading, he has tried many times to locate where his money is without success, does anybody know how to find this pension 

molerat

What "money" are you actually looking for ?

The Royal Doulton Pension Plan was transferred to the Pension Protection Fund. https://www.ppf.co.uk/

Albermarle

I presume the SERPS opt out pension was separate from the main pension plan . So it is likely there is a personal pension put out there somewhere that belongs to him ?

Dox

Could you be more specific about his dates of employment with Royal Doulton - in particular, whether he left their employment before July 1988?

deliaderek

Sorry, meant opted in not out, started employment in 1984 and finished in 1992, tried the portaging company who said the serps pension was in the pod but they are saying they can’t find it and to contact HMRC so feels like he is being given the runaround and really needs the money now 

deliaderek

It’s my phone, contacted portafina who said money in the ppf

Dox

deliaderek said:

It’s my phone, contacted portafina who said money in the ppf

Apologies for the level of detail/jargon which follows, but it's important to try and establish exactly what happened.

In 1984 the Royal Doulton pension scheme was a contracted out final salary scheme, which meant that your partner was automatically contracted out of SERPS while he was a member of the scheme - it wasn't open to him to choose whether or not to contract out. Membership of a company pension scheme could be a condition of employment until 1988, when employees were given a statutory right to opt out of membership of their company pension scheme.

If he hasn't yet done so, suggest that your partner gets a state pension forecast: https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension.    That will show any periods when he was contracted out of SERPS. The DWP will normally be able to confirm whether contracting out was via an occupational scheme (in which case they should be able to supply confirmation of the scheme involved and the dates of contracting out) or a personal pension (quaintly termed an 'appropriate' pension, for no good reason!). If their records show he was contracted out for the whole time he was at Royal Doulton because he was in the Royal Doulton scheme, then all his benefits for that period are indeed in the Pension Protection Fund and his search comes to an end.

So far so good....but this is where it could get messy.

He could have opted out of the Royal Doulton pension scheme in 1988 and set up a personal pension. The earliest date he could have done that was July 1988, when personal pensions were first available. It could have been funded purely by NI rebates - in other words, he would have paid full NI contributions via his salary and the DWP (then known as the DSS) 'rebated' (paid) some of it to his choice of personal pension. If that's what happened, the DWP will not be able to tell you is where his benefits are, because they will not have a record of which personal pension provider he used. HMRC won't be able to help either.

A lot of people are in precisely this situation and there is currently no satisfactory way to trace lost/forgotten benefits. If you are looking for a personal pension (as opposed to an occupational pension), you can't use the government's pension tracing service without the name of the pension provider. If the personal pension was funded by rebates, you won't have any details on old bank statements because the money will have been paid direct from the DWP to the personal pension provider.  

There is a possibility the Unclaimed Assets Register may be able to help: https://www.uar.co.uk/Home  They charge a flat fee of £25 for a search.

If that doesn't work, unless your partner still has paperwork dating back over 30 years, or can suddenly and miraculously remember the name of the pension provider, there's not much he can do, I'm afraid. Fingers crossed his benefits are all safely in the PPF...

Marcon

Dox said:

He could have opted out of the Royal Doulton pension scheme in 1988 and set up a personal pension. 

Does he remember doing that? If so, it is possible that he was mis-sold his personal pension. The personal pension provider would have had to contact him during the review of mis-selling in the 1990s/early 2000s. Can he remember any such contact/have any paperwork from such a contact?

xylophone

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/77631697/#Comment_77631697

Middlestitch

xylophone said:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/77631697/#Comment_77631697

Adds nothing to the fantastic answer from Dox, so not sure why you feel the need to add it to this thread. Also not sure you've understood that the link in your post is of no use if someone doesn't know the name of their personal pension provider, as Dox has already pointed out.

Dox

Marcon said:

Dox said:

He could have opted out of the Royal Doulton pension scheme in 1988 and set up a personal pension. 

Does he remember doing that? If so, it is possible that he was mis-sold his personal pension. The personal pension provider would have had to contact him during the review of mis-selling in the 1990s/early 2000s. Can he remember any such contact/have any paperwork from such a contact?

Good point - and that makes the position even more complicated.

OP, has he checked if he has benefits in the Pension Protection Fund? If they say he hasn't, it sounds as if he left the Royal Doulton pension scheme before he'd built up enough 'pensionable service' to qualify for something known as a 'deferred pension' - the right to retirement benefits at a later date.

If that's what happened, he will have received a refund of any contributions he paid to the Royal Doulton scheme, minus certain deductions. He would have been reinstated into SERPS for his period of scheme membership, so even more important to get a state pension forecast to see what it says about any contracted out service.