Have You Lost Touch of Your UK Pension Pot?

28 October, 2022

Now that you live in the United States, do you continue to receive correspondence from all of your UK pension providers? If you have lost touch with your UK pension provider(s), you are not alone. In the Lost Pensions Survey 2022, published by the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) in October 2022, it was found that “lost” pension pots had risen by 73% compared to 2018, with the value now considered lost to be £26.6 billion (up from £19.4 billion in 2018).

In the survey, lost does not mean gone forever, it simply means that the connection between the UK pension pot and the owner/pension member had been cut off. This could be a result of a person moving jobs and ceasing to contribute to a pension (making it deferred) or a person moving house and not updating their pension provider with their new address. Since COVID-19, the PPI concludes that “higher rates of job mobility, combined with higher than ever chance that a worker was automatically enrolled in a pension by their pre-pandemic employer, could produce a new wave of deferred pots that may be lost by the time members reach retirement”.

If you have lost touch with your UK pension(s), don’t delay until retirement to seek to trace them and update your UK pension providers with your contact details. As the PPI states, pension members can “lose potential value from lost pots, even after they are reunited, as they temporarily forgo the opportunities of choosing newer products, more appropriate investments, or consolidating pots to take advantage of lower fees”.

At Florin Pensions, the most important part of our early work for a client is ensuring we have identified all of a client’s UK pensions and obtained up-to-date information on their value, investments and retirement benefit options. If you would like our assistance to trace your UK pensions, contact Florin Pensions for an initial consultation.