Locked pensions, what to do?

[alldaysleeper]

My DH has 3 pensions from 3 previous jobs, he never paid into any of them they were all paid into by the employers. One was a Civil Service pension, the other with Abbey Life and the third with M&S. We currently don't pay into any pension plan as money is very tight at the moment. Is there any way of unfreezing the pensions so we could start a fresh one with the funds released. Any ideas?

Whilstcyou can't access the money, you can transfercthe value.

My dh has recently transferred about 3 frozen pensions into his current pension fund, via Scottish Widows.

Thanks for the answer, does it cost to transfer the frozen pensions and if so roughly how much e.g. percentage wise?

I'm going through a similar process at the moment with one 'live' pension into which I contribute and two lapsed ones from previous jobs. Even if there have been no contributions from your DH for a while they may not be frozen exactly. Some carry on increasing with inflation or the fund value. I'd recommend you get transfer value statements from them all, see how they are performing, and then get hold of an independent financial advisor to help you to decide what to do next. Sometimes it's wiser to leave a pension balance where it is than pay a fee to transfer it into a fund that goes on to perform badly.

First of all, you need to determine whether they are defined benefit (final salary) or defined contribution( money purchase) pensions. The civil service will be the former I would have thought. You can get a transfer value for either, BUT it is very very very unlikely that transferring a final salary pension entitlement into a private plan will be the best idea for you financially.

You need proper advice if you really want to transfer such a pension plan.

If they are money purchase then you need to compare fees etc to determine whether it is worth transferring.