Pension holders could be missing retirement money after new research found 74% of people living abroad have never reviewed their UK pensions. Research by the financial advisory firm deVere Group warned that the company’s research of more than 750 UK pension holders living overseas found most had failed to check their pension pots. Only 7% said they knew where all of their UK pensions were.
The research found 68% had worked for three or more UK employers before leaving the country, which means they could have several separate pension pots with different providers. Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group, has warned of the “blind spot”, saying that people could have pensions sitting untouched for years without realising they had multiple pots. He has urged both UK residents and expats to urgently review every pot they have built up.
He said: “74% checking nothing is a mirror held up to how the whole country treats pension planning.
“Anyone who has worked for three or more employers should assume there are pensions they are not thinking about right now.
“Each job can leave behind a separate pot, a separate provider and a login nobody has used in years.”
Another 58% of those surveyed had moved home without telling every pension provider.
This means important letters regarding one’s pension could still be being sent to old addresses.
Mr Green said: “Move house without updating every provider and the paperwork keeps going to an address that no longer exists.”
The deVere CEO added: “Nearly half of this group expect to start drawing on these pensions inside 10 years, yet the overwhelming majority have never sat down and reviewed what they actually hold.
“This is a live crisis running through every corner of the UK’s pension system, not a niche problem confined to expats.
“Every year of inaction makes the eventual task larger and the potential loss greater.
“Anyone who has ever paid into a UK pension, wherever they live now, should be asking themselves right now whether they could actually locate every pot they have built up, because the evidence says most people simply can’t.”
The Government’s Pension Tracing Service can help people find contact details for workplace or personal pension schemes, although it does not tell people whether they have a pension with a particular scheme or how much it is worth.
Pension savers can check their workplace pension statements and contact previous employers or pension providers if they are unsure where an old pension is held.
