Tracing wife’s missing pensions

FIREDreamer

My wife worked in NHS catering from 1989 to 1999

We have her NHS pension sorted (1989-1992) and put into payment at the NRA of 60, but she was transferred into an outsourcing company in 1992.

I have not been able to trace any pensions post 1992.

There seem to be an infinite number of Sodexo / Sodexho companies but the ones I have tried have no records.

The hospital she worked for have no record of what happened to her post 1992 pension as the people who worked there at the time are long gone.

Any help appreciated- waiting for the pensions dashboard seems to be our only option.

QrizB

That was long before auto-enrollment, even before TUPE.

Are you sure there is a pension to find? Does she have any payslips from that period and do they show pension deductions?

FIREDreamer

QrizB said:

That was long before auto-enrollment, even before TUPE.

Are you sure there is a pension to find? Does she have any payslips from that period and do they show pension deductions?

Seems unlikely to leave the NHS scheme and have the outsourced company not provide a replacement. The unions wouldn’t have allowed it surely? She is sure that she was in a pension.

Silvertabby

Was she part time, by any chance?  Pre 1995 pension fund membership may have been limited to full time workers only.  

Marcon

Bit of a memory test here, given we're looking back over 30 years...

Sodexo certainly had a final salary pension scheme back in the day, and given the dates involved, I think it's possible it would have come under something known as 'passporting' arrangements. That just means the new employer had a scheme certified by the Government Actuary's Department as broadly comparable to the old public sector scheme someone was leaving. I can't remember when passporting was first introduced, but from memory GAD was involved in bulk transfers of employees from the public to the private sector for some time before then.

I suggest she (not you - she was the member) emails enquiries@gad.gov.uk and asks if anyone can shed any light on what happened to NHS employees who transferred to Sodexo when catering services were outsourced. Don't worry about using any jargon; simply give the facts, including the relevant date of her change of employer as closely as she can remember.  

It's also worth her requesting a SAR covering the years 1990-2000 (gives a bit of leeway on the dates in your post). See my post of 15 May 2021: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6267734/is-there-a-really-detailed-online-method-to-check-nics/p1 It's a long thread but worth reading. If she moved to a defined benefit scheme in the 1990s with her new employer, there's a very strong chance it was contracted out of SERPS, and the SAR would confirm if that's the case.

FIREDreamer

Marcon said:

Bit of a memory test here, given we're looking back over 30 years...

Sodexo certainly had a final salary pension scheme back in the day, and given the dates involved, I think it's possible it would have come under something known as 'passporting' arrangements. That just means the new employer had a scheme certified by the Government Actuary's Department as broadly comparable to the old public sector scheme someone was leaving. I can't remember when passporting was first introduced, but from memory GAD was involved in bulk transfers of employees from the public to the private sector for some time before then.

I suggest she (not you - she was the member) emails enquiries@gad.gov.uk and asks if anyone can shed any light on what happened to NHS employees who transferred to Sodexo when catering services were outsourced. Don't worry about using any jargon; simply give the facts, including the relevant date of her change of employer as closely as she can remember.  

It's also worth her requesting a SAR covering the years 1990-2000 (gives a bit of leeway on the dates in your post). See my post of 15 May 2021: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6267734/is-there-a-really-detailed-online-method-to-check-nics/p1 It's a long thread but worth reading. If she moved to a defined benefit scheme in the 1990s with her new employer, there's a very strong chance it was contracted out of SERPS, and the SAR would confirm if that's the case.

Thanks.

The screenshot in my first post is the full SAR from HMRC for 1987 to 2024 using that link. She had no employment after 1999. The screenshot doesn’t indicate contracting back in otherwise the implied NI post 1992 would have been a bit higher?

Silvertabby

Does another part of the SAR show her NI category for each of those years?  Cat D means contracted out, Cat A means not contracted out.

Marcon

FIREDreamer said:

Thanks.

The screenshot in my first post is the full SAR from HMRC for 1987 to 2024 using that link. She had no employment after 1999. The screenshot doesn’t indicate contracting back in otherwise the implied NI post 1992 would have been a bit higher?

It's clear from your first post that she didn't transfer her NHS pension to Sodexo - you've confirmed the NHS pension is already in payment.


Looking at the figures for 1995/96:

Salary £5,858
LEL was £3,016
full rate employee NI rates were 2% up to the LEL, and 10% above the LEL

so:

£3,016 x 2% = NI £60.32
£5,858 - £3,016 = £2,824 x 10% = NI £284.20

Total NI: £284.20 + £60.32 = £344.52

Your print out shows £344.56, so based on that, it appears she may not have been in contracted out employment - or at least not by means of membership of a salary related pension scheme. She could still have been in a scheme which was contracted out on a money purchase basis (sorry!), in which case she and the employer would have paid full rate NI and some of it would then have been 'rebated' to the scheme.

It's worth trying to get more detailed information by making a further SAR, specifically for the years in which she was employed by Sodexo, if all you've received so far is the summary in your post. Here's what I received (personal info redacted), which as you can see is very detailed indeed:

FIREDreamer said:

QrizB said:

That was long before auto-enrollment, even before TUPE.

Are you sure there is a pension to find? Does she have any payslips from that period and do they show pension deductions?

Seems unlikely to leave the NHS scheme and have the outsourced company not provide a replacement. The unions wouldn’t have allowed it surely? She is sure that she was in a pension.

Auto-enrolment had a predecessor, which many are simply too young to remember: compulsory enrolment in an employer's pension scheme. It wasn't until April 1988 that employers lost the right to make membership of an occupational scheme a condition of employment.

TUPE has been around since the early 1980s, but has never had more than limited applicability to pensions.

My guess (and that's all it can be) is that she was offered membership of a defined contribution pension scheme which may or may not have been contracted out of SERPS - either a trust-based scheme set up by Sodexo purely for its own employees, or some sort of contract-based group personal pension arrangement. Whether she joined is another matter - people's memories fade over the years, and pensions weren't exactly the same burning issue in the 1990s that they are now. For many, cash today looked better than something many years in the future...

OP, I think it's worth approaching GAD as I've suggested above to see if they still have any sort of records relating to the outsource from the NHS to Sodexo.

Otherwise - as you've already said - it's a case of waiting for the long-overdue pensions dashboard and seeing if anything shows up on that.

Sarahspangles

FIREDreamer said:

My wife worked in NHS catering from 1989 to 1999

We have her NHS pension sorted (1989-1992) and put into payment at the NRA of 60, but she was transferred into an outsourcing company in 1992.

I have not been able to trace any pensions post 1992.

There seem to be an infinite number of Sodexo / Sodexho companies but the ones I have tried have no records.

The hospital she worked for have no record of what happened to her post 1992 pension as the people who worked there at the time are long gone.

Any help appreciated- waiting for the pensions dashboard seems to be our only option.

1992/93 and 1993/94 look odd here - I would expect ObsGyn to be a hospital division rather than a business name used by Sodexo?

FIREDreamer

Thanks for your help everybody - GAD it is then!