Consolidating pensions

[Meredithgrey1]

I’ve had a few jobs over the last few years and have had a workplace pension in all of them. I’ve always paid a decent amount in but because I wasn’t at each job that long none will have that much in but I’d like to consolidate them with my personal pension.
How do I do this? I logged into my personal pension account and it had a section for consolidating pensions but it needed details I don’t know how to get, like policy number and current balance. How do I go about getting this info?

The pensions tracing service (which is free) may be able to help. www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details
Or your previous employers HR departments?
There’s a phone number for the tracing service too.
As a complete aside if you are currently in employment it may be better to consolidate under one workplace pension rather than a person pension depending on the terms of the scheme.

As a complete aside if you are currently in employment it may be better to consolidate under one workplace pension rather than a person pension depending on the terms of the scheme.

Oh really, I hadn’t considered that, is that because workplace ones might have better terms? I currently have a workplace one and a personal one, I’m not sure I totally understand all the ins and outs of the terms of both of them, particularly the workplace one (I mean, I broadly do, but not necessarily some of the finer specifics).

Find out firstly how much they both gained in value in the last year. Then also if your workplace one is a final salary(also known as defined benefit) scheme (iewhere you will get salary x a multiple at retirement) or defined contribution scheme ( where you just get whatever is the value of your investment pot). If it’s not stated it’s probably the latter. If it is the latter and has a better investment return than your workplace one then look at/ask if transfers in to the scheme are allowed.

Remember you are looking at which one had the better increase in value as a percentage of the start value 12 months ago. Or the lowest loss percentage I suppose if that’s the direction they are both in

Your work place scheme is likely to have lower charges than your personal scheme. Charges are very important. Performance as mentioned above is a bit of red herring as almost certainly each of your workplace scheme (along with your personal scheme) will have different investment options, workplace scheme likely to have a default option but will be other options too. You need to collate all of the info on the different plans, values, policy numbers, investment options and charges, also if there any enchanced benefits that would be lost on transfer.

I agree with sunshine. All factors stating including investment return on the multiple options to invest in are important.