Pension Consolidation Confusion...

meatballgingersnaps

Hi all,

Firstly, thank you for reading. I'm hoping to find some guidance regarding a pension query that came up a few years ago, and seems to become more and more pressing as time goes on. 

Essentially, I have worked since I was 15. At some point, I was entered into pension pots due to the auto-enrolment feature that was introduced. I'm now 29, and have worked a fair few different jobs due to the gig-economy style of work that I had to take on when I was younger. In 2020, I got my first "proper" career role where there was a significant pension contribution each month. I've now changed jobs, to another role where pension contributions are quite a lot. My partner is in the same position, having changed jobs a few times in his life. 

As far as I know, this means we have various pension pots floating around that we have contributed (in some cases, quite a lot of money) to. I have no idea how to try to consolidate these and really worry about this money being lost should I not do anything about it, or should my old workplaces change their processes or go under for any reason. I have worked out my contributions, and I am sure they total thousands of pounds so far. I've looked online, but the only thing that seems to come up is a paid-for app that says it can consolidate pensions but that nothing is guaranteed and that money might be lost in the process. 

Does anyone know more about this kind of problem and how I might best learn how to manage it or solve it?

Thank you in advance!

Mark_d

It sounds highly unlikely that you have any defined benefit arrangements.  My advice would be to transfer all your existing pensions in to the scheme your currently contributing to.  This is what I have done.  The process if very simple and the pension schemes concerned should tell you what is required for their processes

MallyGirl

first off you need to track down those pensions - do you have any documentation. If they are in 'normal' DC pensions then they won't get lost but it is up to you to keep the administrators up to date with address moves, name changes, changes to expression of wishes etc. It might be easier at this point in your life to gather them all up and transfer each one into your current workplace pension (as long as it supports transfers in). If it won't accept transfers in you could consolidate into one of the existing ones or to a brand new pension. There should be no fee to transfer. You don't need a chargeable app.
You need to choose the destination and then ask that provider to do the transfers in. You will need to provide the details of the old pensions and will have to sign various paperwork authorising the transfers. The receiving pension does all the admin but might need a bit of chasing along the way

xylophone

First find your pensions.

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

squirrelpie

I gathered a whole bunch of fairly small DC pensions during my working life. In my case I was working at a place with a DB scheme, so I just opened a SIPP (with HL as it happened) and transferred all the DC pensions in to it. It was quite easy to do, because I had the details of all my previous pensions to hand. It means it is easier to administer now. If I'd been working for a firm with a DC pension, I might well have transferred everything there, as already suggested.