Workplace pension reduced after the event

spid_mse

I have read threads here whereby people made decisions to retire (e.g. early) based upon their workplace pension provider's quotations, only to have some of the lump sum and ongoing pension snatched away when errors had been spotted months after their retirement. It seems that back then there was no redress. 

I took early retirement (male, then aged 64 and 5 months) on the basis of workplace pension quotes (a defined benefit, "final salary" scheme) from my workplace pension provider. In February 2025 (5 months after retirement) I was sent a letter by the scheme administrator saying that my former employer had furnished them with inflated figures for my pensionable earnings (which were actually correctly shown as non-pensionable, as shown in my payslips) on two occasions and thus I would have to repay 3.7% of the pension commencement lump sum (PCLS) and have a pension drop of 2.7% going forward. They waived reimbursement of the 5 months of overpaid pension.

Does the recent "Consumer Duty" potentially improve the chances of redress in this situation? My appeal is that I made life-affecting decisions based upon the initial agreement.

Marcon

spid_mse said:

I have read threads here whereby people made decisions to retire (e.g. early) based upon their workplace pension provider's quotations, only to have some of the lump sum and ongoing pension snatched away when errors had been spotted months after their retirement. It seems that back then there was no redress. 

I took early retirement (male, then aged 64 and 5 months) on the basis of workplace pension quotes (a defined benefit, "final salary" scheme) from my workplace pension provider. In February 2025 (5 months after retirement) I was sent a letter by the scheme administrator saying that my former employer had furnished them with inflated figures for my pensionable earnings (which were actually correctly shown as non-pensionable, as shown in my payslips) on two occasions and thus I would have to repay 3.7% of the pension commencement lump sum (PCLS) and have a pension drop of 2.7% going forward. They waived reimbursement of the 5 months of overpaid pension.

Does the recent "Consumer Duty" potentially improve the chances of redress in this situation? My appeal is that I made life-affecting decisions based upon the initial agreement.

Pension administrators of DB schemes aren't regulated by the FCA, so the Consumer Duty to which you are referring doesn't apply to them.

It's important to work out whether your complaint is against your employer for supplying wrong information to the administrators (the fact your payslip is correct doesn't mean that's the information provided to the administrators), or against the administrators for incorrectly calculating your benefits. Knowing who waived the reimbursement - employer or trustees/administrators - would help answer that.

If the employer made the error, then you complain to them. Otherwise it's a complaint to the trustees, who have delegated administration to the administrators and are responsible (at least initially) for responding to such complaints.

If raising the complaint informally gets nowhere, and the complaint is against the trustees rather than the employer, the scheme's own Internal Dispute Resolution Procedure (available from the administrators) is your next step. Please read what the Pensions Ombudsman has to say first, to ensure you understand what can be expected to happen and what you need to demonstrate to show you took irreversible decisions based purely on this information, and cannot be expected to have realised there was an error. Have a look at https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/faqs and read the questions relating to overpayments.