Any private pension experts?

[squashyhat]

My father died last year and was in receipt of a work pension for many years. I informed them of his death and have now received a letter telling me they were, around the time if his death, 'reviewing' his pension, with the result that they have decided he was overpaid by over £7000. This is apparently because his Guaranteed Minimum Pension was not appropriately split out from other benefits resulting in a higher pension than he should have received. They are blaming previous pension administrators for the error.

I have no idea what this means. There is money in the estate to pay, but do I just take their word for it? If not what proof can I ask for? I'm pissed off it has taken this long to come to light and that the investigation apparently only started on his death. If he had known about it he definitely would have told me.

As far as I understand they can't go back more than 6 years anyway.

You can ask for sufficient proof to satisfy you that their calculations are correct. You may have to take it to an IFA.

You should definitely ask for proof.

Also, the previous administrator would have given all the data to the new administrator for the new administrator to value the cost of the scheme.

This is the point the error should have been picked up.

How long is the period they are talking about?

I’m sorry for your loss.

There is a massive exercise going on at the moment across all pension schemes where HMRC and the schemes are reconciling all their Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) data and this is leading to lots of under and overpaid pensions being discovered. Therefore it’s probably true that they were already undertaking this exercise at the time he died and it’s not his death that has caused the error to be discovered. I’m surprised they’re still trying to claim it though and not write it off given that he has now passed away. Is it a public sector scheme by any chance? They will be required to try and reclaim an overpayment before writing it off.

You should definitely ask for evidence of their calculations and a full explanation (if it’s a public sector scheme I suspect it may be because they didn’t hold his GMP data and this has meant the annual increases have been overstated). Once you have this information you can then decide if you are happy to pay it or ask them to write it off given that he has now passed away.

Thanks everyone - really helpful replies. Hopefully I can get it written off.