Why has my expected pension gone down

[crowsfeet57]

I have a workplace pension from a bank I worked at many years ago. The pension was payable at 60 but like a lot of women I was caught out by the state pension age going up so I didn't take my bank pension and carried on working, albeit in a minimum wage job after redundancy. As I'm about to turn 65 I thought I'd check how much I'm likely to get as my last estimate was five years ago, to my horror it's gone down by about 10%. I had expected it to go up.

Is this normal. Should I take it now and just pay tax on it for the next year? I'm quite shocked by this and don't have a clue what to do.

Your pension is tied to the financial markets and has taken a huge hit due to our governments "budget"

Your pension fund will be invested in the stock market. The stock market is down at the moment for various reasons so your pension fund will have less value right now.
Do not cash it in now unless you really really need to, as all you will do is crystallise that loss.
Think of shares as widgets.
Your pension contributions have bought one widget a month for say 40 years.
The price of widgets usually goes up, and always does in the long run.
When you checked a decade ago each widget was £1 but right now each widget is only 90p, so your collection of widgets isn't worth as much as you thought.
If you sell now, while the price is low, you have no widgets and only 90p per widget.
If you wait until you can get a better price for widgets you'll have more money.

Has the assumed income gone down, or the investment value, or both? Does it assume you’re going to buy an annuity? Or is it final salary based? The current political/economic turmoil has had a big impact on some investment values, including pensions.

TL:DR version - My pension chap said don’t panic! Get some advice from a professional (there are lots of pension advisers around); short terms things are tough but long term it is very likely to be different.

Most estimates are based on the assumption you’re going to buy an annuity and nobody does that nowadays while interest rates are low, you’ll probably want to just draw down bits as they are needed. And what’s left over will grow/fluctuate in line with market growth.

You’re aware that this year has been rather turbulent, no?
You’ve given next to no information.
If this is simply a DC pot of money that’s been invested with no further payments in, then it’s not too surprising it’s down vs 5 years ago.
If that’s not the arrangement, you need to post more for people to hazard a guess.