Pension Collapsed NO Warning

Mantha05

I took out a personal pension following recommendation from a previous employer. It was the purchase of a number of units and initially I was told that there would be a deduction each year in the number of units to cover the fees of the provider. This was many years ago and I stopped paying-in while I was in a new employers occupational pension scheme and each year I got a nice statement, last may saying I had well over £2.5k in value in the pension. However, by August I was told that due to deducting units for fees I had no value left in the pension and it would be closed in September. I wrote to a Pension advisory place but they didn't respond and in the throws of post-natal depression I let it sink (along wiht a lot of other things). Now I'm back in the land of normality again it is really niggling me but have I missed the boat to act on this and save anything I can, or actually is there nothing I can do. Am really confused and lost and don't know what to do. I'd paid in about £4k into the fund over the time I had been paying in and seemingly the fees were only supposed to be 0.05% a year.

Stompa

The Pension Advisory Service have a helpline:

http://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/

I know you've already written to them, but if it were me I'd give them a call.

dunstonh

There hasnt been a collapse of a personal pension. The closest we got was Equitable Life. It is highly unlikely fees were as low as 0.05% as that has to be impossible. Even cut to bone you are looking at 0.3%. With 1% to 1.5% more typical.

Some legacy pension (ones from many years ago) had charges in the early years which could virtually wipe out 12-24 months worth of payments. These were normal around the early 90s but were largely gone by the mid to late 90s. The only way a pension can drop to zero is if your investments totally collapse (virtually impossible with personal pensions) or you have explicit charges being deducted against it which are not annual management charges.

WHo was the personal pension provider and when did you take it out?