Tracing lost pensions - advice please on hard-to-find pensions!

AdvicePlease123

Using the Pension Tracing Service, Gretel and Aviva's Find & Combine service, i've successfully tracked down the majority of my pension pots, but there are potentially two outstanding sums from the 1990s that are proving incredibly hard to track down.

Does anyone have any advice on getting really forensic with pension tracing?

I find it really odd that you can't simply just plug in your NI number and find things that way!

Marcon

AdvicePlease123 said:

Using the Pension Tracing Service, Gretel and Aviva's Find & Combine service, i've successfully tracked down the majority of my pension pots, but there are potentially two outstanding sums from the 1990s that are proving incredibly hard to track down.

Does anyone have any advice on getting really forensic with pension tracing?

I find it really odd that you can't simply just plug in your NI number and find things that way!

The long overdue Pensions Dashboard is still awaited...

Before going any further, are you sure there are pensions to find? If you give the names of your employers, someone here might recognise them. How long were you with each employer (roughly) and can you give the relevant dates (again, roughly would help).

This thread is worth a read: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6267734/is-there-a-really-detailed-online-method-to-check-nics/p1 It's worth making a SAR for the reasons given in my post of 15 May 2021.

AdvicePlease123

Thanks so much for the link - i've submitted an SAR.

I know which schemes the pensions are in, but both have been taken over by multiple other funds, and i'm being sent round in circles by different financial companies - eg majority of Royal Sun Alliance pensions got taken over by Phoenix Life, but not the one i'm looking for. Phoenix Life confirms this is case, but RSA just send me to Phoenix. ARGH!

In the case of the other pension, Capita Hartshead administered the fund but have no record of me, despite the fact I have paperwork from the time with all the reference numbers etc. It is likely the fund was transferred into (DRUMROLL) the Royal Sun Alliance pension I had at the time, which brings us back to the other pension I can't find!

Marcon

AdvicePlease123 said:

Thanks so much for the link - i've submitted an SAR.

I know which schemes the pensions are in, but both have been taken over by multiple other funds, and i'm being sent round in circles by different financial companies - eg majority of Royal Sun Alliance pensions got taken over by Phoenix Life, but not the one i'm looking for. Phoenix Life confirms this is case, but RSA just send me to Phoenix. ARGH!

In the case of the other pension, Capita Hartshead administered the fund but have no record of me, despite the fact I have paperwork from the time with all the reference numbers etc. It is likely the fund was transferred into (DRUMROLL) the Royal Sun Alliance pension I had at the time, which brings us back to the other pension I can't find!

It happens - and it shouldn't be for the member to do all the chasing, although if you've not updated your contact details, such as change of address (clearly something right at the top of absolutely everyone's to do list when they are undergoing the hassle of a house move!) you aren't entirely blameless. Make a formal complaint using the complaints process, which should be on the insurer's website, or simply ask them for the necessary details. Keep the complaint short, unemotional and clear, including all relevant facts and personal information such as NI, DOB, rough dates of membership etc which should maximise the chances of a helpful and constructive reply.

Brie

Just a thought but given the timing (1990s) and the fact that there were 2 schemes suggests to me that they might have been defined benefit schemes and you might have been in them for less than 2 years which would mean that you had a refund of your contributions.  And there were similar rules for some defined contribution schemes as well.  So potentially you have no benefit/pension pot to claim.  On the other hand I "think" that if you transferred in anything to a scheme then that would mean a refund wouldn't have been possible.  

You could try a machine gun approach and send queries to the major pension administrators - WTW springs to mind, Capita in it's various manifestations and no doubt there are others you might google up.  And is it Aegeus that has a find service as well???

AdvicePlease123

Marcon said:

AdvicePlease123 said:

Thanks so much for the link - i've submitted an SAR.

I know which schemes the pensions are in, but both have been taken over by multiple other funds, and i'm being sent round in circles by different financial companies - eg majority of Royal Sun Alliance pensions got taken over by Phoenix Life, but not the one i'm looking for. Phoenix Life confirms this is case, but RSA just send me to Phoenix. ARGH!

In the case of the other pension, Capita Hartshead administered the fund but have no record of me, despite the fact I have paperwork from the time with all the reference numbers etc. It is likely the fund was transferred into (DRUMROLL) the Royal Sun Alliance pension I had at the time, which brings us back to the other pension I can't find!

It happens - and it shouldn't be for the member to do all the chasing, although if you've not updated your contact details, such as change of address (clearly something right at the top of absolutely everyone's to do list when they are undergoing the hassle of a house move!) you aren't entirely blameless. Make a formal complaint using the complaints process, which should be on the insurer's website, or simply ask them for the necessary details. Keep the complaint short, unemotional and clear, including all relevant facts and personal information such as NI, DOB, rough dates of membership etc which should maximise the chances of a helpful and constructive reply.

Thanks again. We lost a lot of documentation in a house flood, which didn't help - again, that was a learning to keep key documents in a waterproof container, on the top floor!

mothman_2

I've got a very similar issue. My Dixons pension was transferred to Sun Alliance from mercer in 1993 but the now RCA just refer me to phoenix life and or Aptia, neither of whom have been helpful. Just banging my head against a wall and thinking the pension ombudsman might be the next appropriate step?

Marcon

mothman_2 said:

I've got a very similar issue. My Dixons pension was transferred to Sun Alliance from mercer in 1993 but the now RCA just refer me to phoenix life and or Aptia, neither of whom have been helpful. Just banging my head against a wall and thinking the pension ombudsman might be the next appropriate step?

The Pensions Ombudsman isn't there to hunt for 'lost' pensions, but they most certainly are there to help with maladministration ie where people either don't get a reply at all, or are passed from pillar to post with nobody taking responsibility when someone should be doing precisely that.

See https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/2011/730083/coventry-climax-pension-scheme-730083.

Normally the PO will only become involved after you have exhausted the complaints processes in respect of those against whom you are complaining. I'd send the same letter to all those who might (reasonably) be expected to know what happened to your pension, putting all their details on the face of the letter so everyone can see who you are asking for help.

Before you do that, though, are you absolutely sure you have a pension to find? It is quite remarkably easy to forget you transferred a pension 30+ years ago...

Mr_Benn

Is this Governement planned Dashboard going to be so easy to use as to be able to search by your National Insurance number ?

That would be great if true.  Though Im not sure the insurance companies will be as ahappy, as they are happily sat with pots of money that will never get touched.

Marcon

Mr_Benn said:

Is this Governement planned Dashboard going to be so easy to use as to be able to search by your National Insurance number ?

That would be great if true.  Though Im not sure the insurance companies will be as ahappy, as they are happily sat with pots of money that will never get touched.

That's the theory. Contrary to your view, the insurance companies will be delighted if they don't have to waste endless time and resources trying to track down 'missing members', or dealing with queries from people who have never had a pension with them in the first place. The pots of money - especially the small ones - are a pain to administer and often the cost of doing so outweighs anything the insurer might be charging by way of fees.

The Dashboard should be a huge help, but there will still be plenty of cases - many historic - where data has gone astray or been incorrectly recorded, and people will still need to do what OP is having to do: play the hunting game.

Silvertabby

The Dashboard will help - but it won't cover all cases.

Whenever Martin Lewis popped up on TV, urging everyone to trace old pension benefits and not to give up until the company found 'their' money, my ex colleagues and I knew that we'd have a busy few days on the phones.

By the time I started working there, all live, deferred and frozen refund records had been computerised.  
Those records without any entitlements to benefits (mostly because they had taken a full refund of their contributions) weren't computerised, but remained as paper files in the archives.  These won't appear on the Dashboard.

Back to the phone calls..... mostly saying that they had worked for the Council back in the 1970s/80s/90s and asking for a pension statement.  If we couldn't find a computer record (and it never ceased to amaze me how some people seem to think that shouting at the operator will make their computer work faster....) we would ask if they had taken a refund or transferred their benefits to their new schemes.  No, 'otherwise they wouldn't be ringing'.  Advised that we have to check the paper archives, which wasn't a 5 minute job, and get back to them.

In over 95% of the cases, they had indeed taken a refund of their contributions, either by request or automatically.  To be fair, most accepted that, but there were a few who absolutely denied receiving a refund and who wanted their records to be restored or they would write to the papers or Martin Lewis or complain to the Ombudsman.  None of these got anywhere.