We’d like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum.
This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are – or become – political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!
Missing Pension Transfer
Comments
-
All very mysterious - I hope you get to the answer without too much of a fight.
1 -
Any chance you opened a personal pension and have possibly lost track of it?
Googling on your question might have been both quicker and easier, if you're only after simple facts rather than opinions!0 -
1993 was the height of the pensions mis-selling fubar. Any chance that you were pursuaded (by Mr Potter) to transfer your pension to a personal pension plan?
1 -
Pension plans obviously should keep records so that they can administer payment of benefits when due. Once a member no longer has an entitlement, though, should the scheme also keep old correspondence so that they can prove beyond all doubt that the member no longer has any entitlement? And they should do that for how long?
33 years is a very long time to store stuff that isn’t needed. There’s a significant cost.
No reliance should be placed on the above! Absolutely none, do you hear?0 -
The question in this case though is that the member may / possibly should still have an entitlement.
0 -
I’d hope that the deferred member records are accurate, and they say that there’s no entitlement.No reliance should be placed on the above! Absolutely none, do you hear?0 -
It is possible that the same address in 1993 and in 2026 do not have the same postcode. Applies to most of Monmouthshire to my knowledge.
0 -
If they have been discharged from their liability by making a valid transfer out you would expect them to keep evidence of that just in case the member turns up later asking where his benefits are.
0 -
he Pensions Ombudsman is your first port of call, not a solicitor. It's a free service, it has real legal powers, and recovering missing pension transfers after unauthorised movements is exactly the kind of thing they deal with. A solicitor at this stage would cost you money you don't need to spend yet.
The email you've received from the NatWest pension scheme confirming the transfer to "N POTTER ESQ" and admitting they have no record of who that is or where the money went is genuinely significant. Keep that safe, it's your key piece of evidence.
Before you contact the Ombudsman, also try the government's Pension Tracing Service. It's a free search tool that can help identify where a pension ended up when it's been transferred. "N POTTER ESQ" suggests it may have gone to a solicitor or IFA acting on behalf of another provider at the time, so there may be a trail there.
A few other things worth knowing:
Because you were contracted out of SERPS, there's a Guaranteed Minimum Pension element to your entitlement. HMRC holds records of contracted-out pensions and may be able to help trace what happened to it separately from the main scheme records.
When you raise this with the Ombudsman, make clear that the transfer was made without your authorisation and that the scheme has confirmed this in writing. That framing matters. An unauthorised transfer isn't just an admin error, it's a much more serious issue and the Ombudsman will treat it accordingly.
2 -
he Pensions Ombudsman is your first port of call, not a solicitor. It's a free service, it has real legal powers, and recovering missing pension transfers after unauthorised movements is exactly the kind of thing they deal with. A solicitor at this stage would cost you money you don't need to spend yet.
A solicitor isn't going to be needed at any stage. They don't have anything like the authority (or power) of the Pensions Ombudsman and will cost money. The chance of OP getting their legal fees back if they do choose to use a solicitor is close to zero. See
The email you've received from the NatWest pension scheme confirming the transfer to "N POTTER ESQ" and admitting they have no record of who that is or where the money went is genuinely significant. Keep that safe, it's your key piece of evidence.
The email confirmed no such thing - look again at what OP has posted.
Before you contact the Ombudsman, also try the government's Pension Tracing Service. It's a free search tool that can help identify where a pension ended up when it's been transferred. "N POTTER ESQ" suggests it may have gone to a solicitor or IFA acting on behalf of another provider at the time, so there may be a trail there.
The Tracing Service needs to have the name of the scheme or the employer. You can't use the name of an intermediary to trace a pension. The transfer would have been scheme to scheme; it couldn't have been paid to a third party.
When you raise this with the Ombudsman, make clear that the transfer was made without your authorisation and that the scheme has confirmed this in writing. That framing matters. An unauthorised transfer isn't just an admin error, it's a much more serious issue and the Ombudsman will treat it accordingly.
The scheme hasn't confirmed any such thing.
Except it is needed - and often for far longer than 33 years. See
Googling on your question might have been both quicker and easier, if you're only after simple facts rather than opinions!2
Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply
Categories
- All Categories
- 355.8K Banking & Borrowing
- 254.9K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
- 456.2K Spending & Discounts
- 248.3K Work, Benefits & Business
- 606K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
- 179K Life & Family
- 263.8K Travel & Transport
- 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
- 16.2K Discuss & Feedback
- 37.7K Read-Only Boards