SERPS

dunstonh

deliaderek said:

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 

Can we ask why you are referring to SERPS?   Is it because you know he contracted out of SERPS and left the Royal Doulton scheme or was it because he was contracted out within the Royal Doulton scheme?

xylophone

Adds nothing to the fantastic answer from Dox,

You may (or may not) have noticed that I asked 

Has your husband obtained a state pension forecast?

And 

When he left the company, was he given a statement of deferred benefits?

Neither of these questions has been answered; if they were, it might throw some light on the situation.  

deliaderek

Sorry for delayed answering, have to wait for him get home from work, yes he has state pension forecast of £175.20 per week saying contracted out COPE amount of £29.31 not payable by government , he has no recollection of receiving a statement of deferred benefits 

xylophone

saying contracted out COPE amount of £29.31 not payable by government 

See https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/75903375/#Comment_75903375

The DWP guy advised that DWP records are received from HMRC. I called HMRC. HMRC hold a detailed record of all NI payments received. This includes information on SERPS deductions and the pension schemes that have received the SERPs benefit.

HMRC gave me the detail of periods of SERPs and the names of the schemes.

Linton

AIUI...

The £175.20 is the amount that will be paid, which in this case is the full pension.  COPE is a number used in that calculation and represents the SERPs that was not paid for from your and your employers NI.  It does not necessarily mean that the money is explicitly available from elsewhere.  When SERPs started employers pensions were only available to a minority of employees so the then Labour givernment introduced a state substitute.  Obviously those employees who already did have an employers pension that provided as good or better benefits than SERPs may not have wanted to pay for a new state pension as well and so  contracting-out and paying less NI was included as an option. Contracting-out also meant lower employer NI and so was a requirement imposed by most employers for membership of their pension schemes.  There would therefore not be any extra payment due corresponding to the COPE. It could be seen to be already part of the employer pension.

The rules changed several times.  At some point you may have paid some extra NI which was diverted into a separate private pension instead of SERPs.   So whether you get an extra pension depends on exactly when you were contracted out.