I was recently challenged to do a pensions personality test by one of the retirement experts at Scottish Widows.
To his surprise – or maybe not – I am an optimist ostrich.
According to the profile definition, I have “perfected the art of changing the subject when someone mentions pensions”.
The old saying ‘the cobbler's children are always the worst-shod’ is, apparently, spot on.
I spend my days speaking, writing and breathing pensions, but when it comes to my own, in fact, I’m an ostrich. I know I need to do it, I just never get around to it.
But, as Scottish Widows suggested, it was time to lift my head from the sand and engage with my retirement savings.
A case of ‘practice what you preach’, if you prefer.
My missing pension policy dates from 2014. Not 1984. It was done under auto-enrolment. Well, in my case, as in many others, that is more easily said than done. In four years of working in the UK, I’ve accumulated four different defined contribution (DC) pension pots.
Three of them are with Scottish Widows – including my current one – and there’s another one with Fidelity.
I thought, maybe clouded by ingenuity, that it would be easy to transfer the other two to my current scheme, since they are all with the same provider.
The Scottish Widows online pension finder service could only identify one of them, an old one – let’s call it pension pot B. The current one (pension pot C) was originally with Zurich – which sold its workplace pension business to the provider this year.
After having a chat with customer service, pension pot A could not be found. To be fair, it is the only one I don’t have a policy number for.
But one would think a national insurance number or the name of the employer would suffice to find the scheme.
Pension pot C is, apparently, with another division of Scottish Widows.
With my papers to transfer B to C I also received a letter with a phone number to call, to discuss the process. Regarding pension pot A, I need to fill a form to trace my policy.
Scottish Widows staff have been very helpful – but progress has been slow. Perhaps I’m to blame, as calling my pension provider and filling out a form is not the first thing on my mind when I get home.
I have reported numerous times that it is often difficult and bureaucratic to consolidate DC pension pots. We all know it.
But how can the government promise a pension dashboard for next year, even if it is one only containing auto-enrolment schemes data, as was mentioned the other week?
My missing pension policy dates from 2014. Not 1984. It was done under auto-enrolment.
Shouldn’t we be realistic and take the time to get it right? Phase in the providers into the project, making sure that their data is correct and up to date?
Or are we going to ask consumers to have the memory of an elephant and remember all their pension pots and make sure they are included in the dashboard?
The project risks being a massive data correction exercise before it even gets to its purpose of reuniting savers with old pension pots.
As for me, I am really trying to pull my head out from the sand. But let me tell you, it isn’t easy or pleasant.
Maria Espadinha is senior reporter at FTAdviser and Financial Adviser
