Previous employer saying they refunded my pension contributions

[SpecialOPs]

But I’m sure pretty they haven’t!

I’m in my 50s. I have a couple of pensions from
different employers which I get regular statements for. Recently I was thinking about my pension pot and realised that I had never received any letters regarding my pension from a previous employer that I had left (in 2000) before I spent quite a few years as a SAHM. So I checked the pension tracing service to see if I could find it. Not there.

The company is very large and still exists so I got in touch with HR. Unsurprisingly they don’t hold any data on me anymore but they gave me the details of the company that deals with their pensions and I was told my pension contributions were refunded to me after I left. I asked for details but they couldn’t give me any and referred me back to HR who haven’t got any data.

I thought this was very odd as I was 29 then so why would they have given me my pension contributions? I always thought you couldn’t touch them until you were pension age (or 55 for a lump sum depending on policy).

That company had a very generous pension scheme and over the course of my employment, I probably paid in about £7-8k, employer contributed a lot more as it was a final salary pension scheme type of thing (private sector - investment bank). I think I would have remembered getting that in my bank account seeing as we had young children and I actually quit my job as we were struggling with childcare and long commute and struggled financially for a bit afterwards!

If they had refunded me my contributions (which they didn’t), surely their contributions would still form part of my pension or would they have taken them back? That was part of my employment benefits though! Would be in the region of £40k+

Has anyone come across this?

Can't you contact the pension provider?

Sounds like bs to me.

When I opted out of mine for a while I had some contributions refunded and the employer contributions were also refunded back to my employer.

That was only because I opted out when starting with a new company. If you opt out within a month or two they refund but if you opt out at any other time you don't get refunded. But it doesn't sound like that's what you did so they definitely shouldn't have refunded you 7k randomly without notifying you.

My refund was sent to my employer for them to send on to me in my next wage so if you don't remember receiving it then maybe it wasn't forwarded on to you.

Do you have a copy of your payslips from that time? Or P60/P45? That might help work out where the money went.
I have cashed in a tiny pension pot (less than £700 if I recall) as the fund needed a minimum amount in it and I wasn't employed for very long so after a few years they refunded it to me via a bank transfer I think.

Good thing you remembered yours, hope you manage to track it down!

You might be able to get some help here
https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/contact-us/scheme-members-who-to-contact/report-concerns-about-your-workplace-pension/report-missing-payments-to-your-workplace-pension

Also
https://www.gov.uk/employers-workplace-pensions-rules

https://adviser.royallondon.com/technical-central/pensions/contributions-and-tax-relief/refund-of-contributions/

Doesn’t sound right to me but a long time since I dealt with employees pensions.

Auto enrolment came into effect from about 2012, which gives you a month to opt out and get a refund.

Prior to that, if you’d been with your employer less than 2 years you may have requested and been eligible for a short service refund. This ended in 2015.

You’d only get a refund of your own contributions, your employer would also have theirs refunded.

Was it the pension provider you contacted? Or a payroll/ third party who told you the contributions had been refunded? The pension provider should still be able to provide you with the reason for any refund, dates. The payment would have gone to your employer to refund you.

Yes DH received money back after a less than two year service but he didn’t request this. The large company he worked for just did it and he got a refund.

Pension schemes often have a rule that you had to have paid in for at least 2 years to be entitled to benefits when you leave. So if you paid in for less than 2 years then yes, you might only have been entitled to a refund of your own contributions. Ask them to provide the evidence that they paid this to you. At that time they would have also had to make a payment back to HMRC to buy you back into SERPS, assuming that the employer’s scheme was contracted out - ask them to provide evidence that they did that too.

Unfortunately if you did have less than 2 years service and were therefore only entitled to a refund, it’s only your contributions that get refunded, you lose the employer’s contributions.

As above - 2 years service or below and you'd have been eligible for (and it would possibly have been assumed that you'd accept) a refund of your bit of it. I had a refund of 18 months of NHS pension. It won't be on any payslips, I don't think. Mine in 2007 just got sent to my bank account with a letter.

How long were you there for/a member of the scheme for?

If less than two years then a final salary scheme would have refunded you your contributions (but your salary would have to have been pretty high to pay in 7-8k in under 2 years, given the average employee contribution to a final salary scheme was around 5-7% back then).

You could complain to the pensions ombudsman but with no evidence he’s unlikely to uphold the complaint.