Among those with a forgotten pension, the majority believe they have misplaced one pot (77%), although 17% think they have forgotten about two and 6% have forgotten three or more.<\/p>\n
According to government figures, there is an estimated \u00a3400 million in unclaimed pension savings[3]. At the same time, almost three in five (59%) UK adults are worried about not having enough money to last them in retirement[4].<\/p>\n
Most pension schemes of which you\u2019ve been a member must send you a statement each year. These statements include an estimate of the retirement income that the pension pot may generate when you reach retirement.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re no longer receiving these statements \u2013 perhaps because of changes of address \u2013 then to track down the pension there are three bodies to contact: the pension provider, your former employer if it was a workplace pension, or the Pension Tracing Service.<\/p>\n
Although tracking down a lost pension can provide a valuable boost to retirement income, those who delay could receive a smaller amount than expected. A forgotten pension may have been subject to charges and not invested in the best way suited to the policyholder, making it worth less than it would have been if it had been actively managed.<\/p>\n
The research revealed the lack of engagement around pensions. More than a quarter of savers (28%) admitted to never reviewing their retirement savings, while almost a fifth (19%) of those with a pension said they review it less than once every five years[5].<\/p>\n
Since the introduction of the Pensions Act 2008, every employer in the UK must put certain staff into a pension and contribute to it \u2013 this is called \u2018automatic enrolment\u2019. Since the introduction of automatic enrolment, the number of pension savers who are unaware of their fund choices or have never reviewed them has risen to almost 1.5 million people or 15% of private sector employees, up from 9% at the start of 2013[6].<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also important to be aware of the potential consequences of having a number of different pension pots with small amounts of money in each. It\u2019s likely that there will still be charges taken out of those pots for their management and administration and that can have implications if you are no longer contributing into them.<\/p>\n
A PENSION IS A LONG-TERM INVESTMENT. THE FUND VALUE MAY FLUCTUATE AND CAN GO DOWN, WHICH WOULD HAVE AN IMPACT ON THE LEVEL OF PENSION BENEFITS AVAILABLE.<\/p>\n
YOUR PENSION INCOME COULD ALSO BE AFFECTED BY INTEREST RATES AT THE TIME YOU TAKE BENEFITS. TAX IMPLICATIONS OF PENSION WITHDRAWALS WILL BE BASED ON YOUR INDIVIDUAL CIRCUMSTANCES, TAX LEGISLATION AND REGULATIONS WHICH ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE IN THE FUTURE.<\/p>\n
Source data:<\/strong> Out of sight, out of mind The extent to which pension policies are being forgotten has been revealed in research from Aviva. A survey of almost ten thousand people who hold a pension has revealed that just under one in eight (13%) admitted they have at least one pension that they had forgotten about[1]. This… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalapenoltd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n[1] YouGov survey of 9,910 people in the UK
\n(Jan\u2013Dec 2015) who hold a pension carried out on behalf of Friends Life, now part of the Aviva group
\n[2] ABI Key Facts 2015 says there are 20.8m individual pension policies in force. 13% of 20.8m = 2.7m
\n[3] DWP: https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/new-pension-tracing-service-website-launched
\n[4] Research conducted for Aviva by Censuswide, with 2002 General Consumers aged 18+ in GB between 30 September and 5 October 2016. The survey was conducted from a random sample of UK adults.
\n[5] YouGov survey of 9,498 people in the
\nUK carried out on behalf of Friends Life,
\nnow part of the Aviva Group
\n[6] Aviva\u2019s latest \u2018Working Lives\u2019 Report and analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"