Careless Brits miss out from lost pension pots

twitter-iconfacebook-iconlinkedin-iconmail-iconprint-icon
Search supported by
Careless Brits miss out from lost pension pots

One in five people in the UK with multiple pension pots has lost track of some or all of them, research by Aegon has revealed.

The research, which coincided with the completion of the pension dashboard prototype project, found that 62 per cent of people have more than one pension pot.

Of those, 21 per cent had lost track of at least one of those pots.

Almost two fifths (39 per cent) of the more than 1,000 people surveyed, meanwhile, did not know the value of their pension pot or pots.

In a separate survey of more than 2,000 people, Aegon quizzed people on their expectations of the pensions dashboard, which is due to go live in 2019.

Forty-five per cent of respondents said the pension dashboard would give them an "up-to-date value of their savings so far".

Thirty-five per cent thought it would help stop them losing track of their pensions, and 29 per cent said it would help them save more.

Seventeen per cent of over 55s, meanwhile, said it would encourage people to consolidate their pension savings or pension pots with different employers.

Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon UK, said it was "concerning" that a fifth of people had lost track of some of their savings.

"Planning what your retirement will look like without knowing how much money you have to create a retirement income is near impossible," she said. 

"The pensions dashboard should greatly simplify the process of finding lost pensions, as well as providing people with an easy way to view all their pension pots, including the State pension, in one place.

"However, the dashboard can only be a truly useful tool if all pension schemes and providers are able to adequately digitise and provide the necessary information in a way that the dashboard can display."

She called on the government to "encourage all schemes" to be ready to supply data to the dashboard by 2019, though she stopped short of calling for participation to be made compulsory.

The Association of British Insurers (of which Aegon is not a member) led the project to create a pensions dashboard prototype.

The prototype was completed in March, and is currently being demonstrated.

As FTAdviser reported recently, the ABI has urged the government to make participation compulsory, on the grounds without compulsion, many of the thousands of defined benefit schemes will boycott the dashboard.

The ABI also said the dashboard should be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority rather than The Pensions Regulator.

Both the ABI and HM Treasury support a "multiple dashboard" model, that will see providers building their own consumer interface rather than the industry or government a single, centralised dashboard.

james.fernyhough@ft.com