Finished your hunt?
Once you’ve finished the journey to find your missing pensions, it’s time to build them into your retirement plan.
Build on your retirement vision
We’ve designed the checklist below to help you.
If you want to you can download and print it, and tick off the steps as you work through them.
If you need more help have a look at the Pathfinders page, which has contact details for organisations that can offer free pensions guidance.
Five key checkpoints
Checkpoint 1
Your retirement age
Check what retirement age each pension provider has for you. Is it in line with when you plan to start taking your benefits? If not, ask the provider to update it for you.
Checkpoint 2
Investment and risk
Check how each pension pot is currently invested. Do you want to change the investment choices to reflect how you feel about investment risk, or bring them more into line with your retirement vision?
Note
(This only applies to defined contribution (DC) pensions, which grow from contributions and investments. There won’t be investment choices if it’s a defined benefit (DB) pension, based on your salary and how long you built up the pension. Your provider will be able to tell you what sort of pension it is.)
Checkpoint 3
Check the charges
Check the charges on your pension pot. If it was set up some years ago there could be several charges, including ‘paid-up’ charges where you pay more because you’re not contributing to the pension. Charges have generally reduced over the years – so a modern pension could offer better value for money.
Checkpoint 4
Protect your loved ones
Fill in, or update, an expression of wish form (which may also be called a ‘nomination’ or ‘nomination of beneficiaries’ form) for each of your pensions. This form names the people (or organisations) you’d like to get the benefits that would be paid if you die before you have taken them.
Checkpoint 5
Think about making a pension collection
There are potentially good reasons to collect all your pensions together in one place, known as ‘consolidation’.
Note
- It could make your pension easier to manage, as you’d be able to see exactly how much you’ve got.
- It could save you money on charges, as you’d only be paying charges to one pension provider rather than several, and you could choose a provider with lower charges.
- You might even find you’ve got more choices when you take your benefits.
But beware! Consolidation may not be right for you, especially if some of your pensions have promises or guarantees you’d lose if you transferred them.
Pension pathfinders
Lots of organisations offer pensions guidance.
You’ll find some of them here.
Do you have a pension tracing success story?
Tell us about it and inspire others!
Share your journey
Use our hashtags to spread the word on social media. As many as 1 in 20 people could have lost a pension – your friends and family could be among them.
Let’s get pensions trending!