The DWP have launched a new website pension tracing service to assist people find their pension savings.
It is estimated that there are some £400 million pension savings that are unclaimed, money people have previously saved for their retirement, and this new website will help people to locate their savings.
With job mobility ever on the rise and pensions auto auto-enrolment placing more and more workers in pension schemes, it is estimated that more and more people will lose track of their pensions.
Minister for Pensions, Baroness Ros Altmann said:
“People have had on average 11 jobs during their working life which can mean they have as many work place pensions to keep track of.
The new DWP online Pension Tracing Service helps reunite people with their lost pensions, giving details of providers to help people track them down.
I’d encourage anyone who thinks they may be missing out on any savings to use the free online service at www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details.”
The new service is simple to use and provides trace results immediately. Individuals enter their former employers’ details into the online database and are provided with contact details for pension schemes they may have paid into.
The service is free to use and enables people to search a database of more than 320,000 pension scheme administrators.
The new website has been tested with users with 83% either satisfied or very satisfied with the service they received.
There were 169,000 tracing requests in 2015/16 (this covers the online service, agent referred, telephony and postal channels). Over the past 10 years there has been a 436% increase in tracing requests.
Comment
It must be a welcome improvement for individuals, however we do perceive one potential problem – it relies on the individuals knowing the details of their previous employers? We wonder how many will actually have this information to hand.
