Company say no pension, despite paper proof?

johnsg

Hi. I wondered if anyone could advise on this. My wife worked for a short time (18 months) at a company in the 1980s. She still has a paper letter advising that she would be enrolled into their pension scheme. We’ve contacted the company who say they can’t find any record of her in the scheme - despite our paper proof. Can anyone advise on who what we should do to try and follow this up?

flaneurs_lobster

It would be typical for service of less than two years not to give rise to a pension, any contributions made by the employee would be returned in the final wage payment.

Abbafan1972

could it be that she was refunded her contributions when she left the company. I had one like this - I still had the paperwork and the amount was only small - I went through all the proper channels and the scheme couldn’t be found - I think it was someone on here that suggested i could have been refunded, as I was only at the company for a short time.

NormalNorman

Have you tried a tracing service like Gretel for example?

Marcon

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6672888/company-say-no-pension-despite-paper-proof

I'm afraid the answer is that there's not going to be a pension to 'find'. She quite simply wouldn't have been in the scheme long enough to have built up an entitlement to a 'deferred' pension. Prior to 6 April 1988, she would have needed at least five years of scheme membership (that reduced to two years for leavers on or after 6 April 1988).

If the scheme was non-contributory, there would have been no member contributions to refund at the time she left. If it had been contributory, as suggested above, her contributions (less tax) would have been refunded at the time she left the company's employment.