AD – this is a paid collaboration. If you've recently been thinking ‘I need to find my pension', then this is the article for you.
Is your pension pot one of the 1.6 million pension pots that are currently unclaimed in the UK? Adding up to 20 billion pounds (according to the Association of British Insurers), it is no wonder that with many of us having multiple jobs our pensions are kept all over the place. Combine moving house with moving job and you might not even know where to start when it comes to finding all of your pension pots. Did you know that you can use a free service to track your pension pots?
A few years ago employers had to offer a workplace pension to employees unless they opted out. If you have moved jobs since then, or you think some of your employers previous to this change were paying into a pension for you then it is important that you find your pension pot.
Once you know the balance and you know where your pension pot is, you can decide what to do with it. It might be that you transfer all of your pensions into one place, or just have access to update your personal details (such as an address change) when you need to.
You don't want to end up in the situation my Dad has found himself in, without access to his private pension pot. We left the United Kingdom and moved to South Africa after I was born, where we lived for 12 years. During that time not only have we moved houses a lot, the company have also stopped operating and finding his pension is proving to be rather difficult. As he has been retired for a number of years now it would have been really useful to have his pension pot information so that he could claim the monies owed to him.
Whether you want to know your existing pension balance, transfer your balance or just start to place or your retirement, it is really important to know where your pension pot is.
Isn't it hard to find where your pensions are?
It can be! If you are sitting down and trying to find your pension or pensions you might not even know where to start.
However, Rightly provide a free tool to help you to find all of your pension pots in just one go.
Using the tool you can ask all of your previous employers whether you have a pension with them, and if you did, where it is.
All you have to do is click on ‘Get Started' and then search for your previous employers. Once you have selected them you can sign up (using your Facebook account, Google account or your email address) and send an access request. This will then automatically ask them to provide information about any pension you may have with them.
Thanks to your ‘right of access' under GDPR law, the company has to let you know if you have a pension pot with them. This must be done within 30 days unless they have a valid reason to ask for an extension.
I don't even know if I had a pension with a previous employer?
Even if you aren't sure whether you had a pension with a previous employer it is worth sending an access request through Rightly to see if you do or not.
If you don't have one then they will still have to let you know – so you have nothing to lose by asking!
Who are Rightly?
Rightly is a free service that helps you to take back control of your data. This means that you can contact over 12,000 businesses in just a few clicks and use your date rights to do things such as finding out what data a business holds on you, opting out of marketing preferences, obtain evidence to use in appeals and even stop companies from selling your personal data.
So far over 60,000 people have used Rightly to take back control of their data!
Best of all, Rightly do this all for free.
They offer many fantastic services for free – including the pension tracker, the address changer, finding details that companies have about you (including social media companies and dating companies) and much more.
Have you got much planned for retirement?
