Barclays UK retirement fund

guitarberyl

I have a question regarding a "lost" private pension from Barclays bank for whom I worked between 1987 and 1989.

I tracked down my pension using the government's pension tracing service.

After several emails and confirmation of my identity I received a final email message stating that my pension scheme had been found but that there are specific criteria for members of the Barclays Pension Scheme. They need a specific length of service depending on the date they joined.

Date of leaving after 05/04/1988 - 2 years service.

As I joined the scheme on 14/09/1987 and left on 28/07/1989, I am told "you do not have any pension benefits in the scheme".

Is there any possibility of fighting this or of claiming back at least the money paid in to the scheme, however small the sum? Or is it definitively lost?

I can't find any information specific to this on the website or forum

Silvertabby

guitarberyl said:

I have a question regarding a "lost" private pension from Barclays bank for whom I worked between 1987 and 1989.

I tracked down my pension using the government's pension tracing service.

After several emails and confirmation of my identity I received a final email message stating that my pension scheme had been found but that there are specific criteria for members of the Barclays Pension Scheme. They need a specific length of service depending on the date they joined.

Date of leaving after 05/04/1988 - 2 years service.

As I joined the scheme on 14/09/1987 and left on 28/07/1989, I am told "you do not have any pension benefits in the scheme".

Is there any possibility of fighting this or of claiming back at least the money paid in to the scheme, however small the sum? Or is it definitively lost?

I can't find any information specific to this on the website or forum

You can't fight the 2 years vesting (minimum membership) rule.  That applied to all DB pension schemes, not just Barclays.

Are you absolutely sure that you paid pension contributions?  Some schemes back then were non-contributory (hopefully a Barclays member will pop up and confirm this one way or the other).

If you did pay contributions, then the normal procedure would have been to offer you a refund of your contributions or, perhaps, a transfer to your new employer's pension scheme shortly after you left.  However, the e-mail from Barclays confirming that they had found your records but that you don't have any pension rights points to the scheme being non-contributory, as I would have expected the e-mail to say "because you took a refund of your contributions/transferred your benefits to X pension fund".

dunstonh

Is there any possibility of fighting this or of claiming back at least the money paid in to the scheme, however small the sum? Or is it definitively lost?

There is nothing to fight. 2 years of qualification was pretty much universal back then.  

You didn't lose any money because you didn't pay anything into it. The Barclays scheme was non-contributory, like all the banks at the time.