By Tony Chamberlain
Last year, we shared two blogs about how to track down forgotten UK pension pots.
The first gave an overview of the situation with unclaimed pensions and provided some (hopefully) useful links. The second was especially for people who had contracted out of SERPS (the state earnings related pension scheme).
With these in mind, a recent article in FT Adviser caught my eye.
There are some interesting stats in there, based on research by Standard Life, including:
2.8 million
Estimated number of unclaimed UK pension pots
£26.6bn
Value of those pension pots
20%
Percentage of people with multiple pensions who say they’ve lost track of at least one
When reading this article, the first thing that struck me was that £26.6bn is extraordinarily higher than the DWP’s 2016 estimate of £400 million (already a huge sum, of course).
The second thing that struck me, as I read more of the article, was that the “new” tracing service offered by Standard Life and its technology partner, Raindrop, is something GBPensions has been doing for our clients for years.
Moreover, we don’t charge for this service – even if someone chooses not to proceed with a pension transfer with us.
Following the clues to give our clients clarity
Once we’ve the basic information from our prospective client, the GBPensions team is extremely adept at tracking down their pension/s.
Still, it can be a time-consuming and complex task. For example, a few months ago, a couple sent us LOAs (letters of authority) for 16 schemes between them. Our investigations revealed that many of those schemes had been consolidated into one or another, but the couple weren’t aware of this. Ultimately, they had fewer than half the number they’d originally thought.
Similarly, this week, another couple kindly provided 13 LOAs. We’ve already been able to ascertain that, due to doubling up and provider name changes, there are probably closer to ten schemes in total.
How GBPensions’ UK admin goes into bat for our clients
In 2022, GBPensions set up a UK-based postal drop-box and telephone service.
Even today, in this age of secure, digitally encrypted signatures, pension transfers still require paperwork with “wet” signatures. There are stringent deadlines to meet, too. We, therefore, wanted to streamline the process and mitigate potential delays caused by erratic global mail.
With an absolute commitment to caring for our clients, this UK service has proven its worth time and again. We can say for sure that transfers have happened more efficiently because of it.
Here’s just one example. Last month, our UK admin person was helping us trace a very old pension scheme that had been sold by the original provider to another. She was trying to ascertain who had bought the scheme and eventually narrowed it down to one. This company had previously denied all knowledge of the scheme but changed their mind when she challenged them again. In the end, she became so frustrated by the unhelpful way they behaved on the telephone that she climbed in the car and drove to their offices. Once there, she refused to leave until someone answered the questions she was asking on our client’s behalf.
So, when we say we’ll exhaust every avenue to help reunite our clients with their monies, we really mean it!
