3 days Ago By [email protected] (Ruby Flanagan)
One man has managed to track down £20,000 in lost pension savings pots which has helped open "new doors" for his golden years. There are a variety of reasons why you may lose a pension pot - for example, if you change jobs regularly or move house. It is believed that there are around three million pension pots worth £26.
6billion that are classed as "lost" or "forgotten" in the UK. Anthony, 53, who is based in Cambridgeshire was one of those statistics not too long ago. Anthony, who is known as Tony, has worked as a driver his whole life from taxis to 7.
5 tonne HGV trucks and over the years has had a whole raft of different employers. The 53-year-old told The Mirror that he has given much thought about pensions or his retirement as he plans to keep working for as long as he can. He explained: "Because I've had various jobs and I honestly haven't thought about pensions and retirement at all but I started a new job around two years ago and I was put into a pension plan.
So I just started to wonder what happened to any old ones. I knew I must've had some out there but I couldn't tell you where any of them were at all." Have you found money in lost pension pots? Let us know: mirror.
[email protected].
uk Not so long after deciding to take a look into it, Tony saw an advert for the pension tracing service app Penny on social media. Although feeling a tad sceptical at first, after researching the business and its reviews Tony was convinced the firm could help him thinking "What have I got to lose". Penny helps people find their lost savings pots as well as offers plans and pension investment options.
The thing which persuaded Tony to use the service was that it could move any lost pension pots found into one which can then be managed on the Penny app. Penny does charge a 0.75% fee per year on the value of the pension which is called the Annual Management Charge (AMC) which falls within the Workplace Pension charge cap of 0.
75%. You can track down your lost pension pots yourself by contacting ex-employers and digging out old paperwork. However, if this isn't possible, then the Government has a free Pension Tracing Service tool.
This is a free service and to use it, you will need the name of an employer or a pension provider. If you find an old pension pot then the service provides contact details for pension schemes run by employers, as well as for private schemes by pension providers. Tony didn't have any details on any of his former pension pots, but he gave whatever information he could to Penny and left them to it.
Finally, after six weeks, Tony was told that Penny had found a lost pension with the pot totalling around £1,000 which Tony said was "incredible". Over the next two weeks, four more pension pots were located with one of them holding a huge £8,000. Overall, the five pension pots added an extra £20,000 to Tony's retirement fund.
He said: "I wasn't expecting to find anything, but now I've got an extra £20,000 which would've just gone. It's great. I don't feel like I want to retire, I enjoy staying busy and I like to be active and my brain to be working, so I may not retire with it.
But when I can pull out a lump sum I could use it on an expensive holiday or a new car, or a caravan. Now I've got this pot of cash sitting there, it's opened doors for me and it's given me a different way forward than I had before." However, Tony warned that it wasn't all plain sailing as he had to put in a lot of man hours to get his pensions transferred into the same pot and it included a fair chunk of paperwork.
He also struggled with one pension provider who he said was "reluctant" to move over his cash. He said: "My god they were dragging their heels. They made it as difficult as they could to transfer without breaking the law.
I filled in the form 100% correct, two weeks later they replied saying we need to check it’s you so made me call in. I called the number they provided and sat on hold for 35 minutes. When I finally spoke with someone they said sorry you need to call back tomorrow, it hadn't even gone four.
“It just took weeks of letters and phone calls, and if Penny wasn't there to help me I probably would've just bailed but eventually I got confirmation the money had been transferred. For me Penny has stepped up the game in pension transfers, I can't sing their praises high enough”. Going forward, Tony says he can now keep an eye on his pension pot through Penny and says he will continue to contribute to his pot to help it grow even more.
In the meantime, Tony will continue to work and enjoy his travels across the UK on his Harley motorbike with his pet parrots, Nico and Fred..
