LOST PENSIONS FOUND!
If you paid into a pension scheme at work especially since 1975 you
may be able to claim money from it when you reach 60 or 65. It is easy to forget
about old pensions until 1988 if a company had a scheme you had to pay into it
and if you worked there for more than a couple of years your pension may well
have been preserved for you.
Many personal pensions have been forgotten about too. Millions have been
paid into since 1986. But people often pay in for a few years and then stop. So
it is easy to lose the details or decide it is not worth worrying about. But it
can be.
The Pension Tracing Service is dedicated to reuniting people with these
lost funds. It has details of 200,000 schemes and every year it helps around
16,000 people track down lost pensions. It says that they get an average of £16
a week and a lump sum of £1900, though some have had lump sums as high as
£20,000 and pensions of more than £100 a week. The service is free and run by
the Department for Work and Pensions.
To find an old pension you will need to have at least some information.
Start by making a list of where you worked and when. Firms change their names so
it will help if you can remember any details about the address where you worked
and what the company did. If you have any paperwork from the time so much the
better. Try to be as accurate as you can about when you worked there.
Before 1975 people who left a job normally lost any rights to a pension.
And even after that you may have given up those rights if you left within a few
years. But it is well worth checking. And do not worry if you cant remember
whether you paid into the scheme or not. Sometimes it happens automatically and
many people do not realise they are paying into a pension scheme.
If you are looking for a personal pension then it will help if you know
the name of the firm that ran it for you or any name or address related to it.
Again, any documents will be immensely helpful.
It will take a bit of work. But it could be a very profitable use of a
couple of hours.
More
information at www.direct.gov
put pension tracing service in the search box,
or phone 0845 6002 537.
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