The number of people within this group who have lost track of one or all of their pensions has increased slightly from 21% to 22%.
This means that more than 7million people may have misplaced some of their retirement savings.
The findings highlight the challenge of a broader trend towards a career involving an average of 11 jobs and the difficulty of keeping tabs on workplace savings.
However, the recent survey highlighted an improvement in pension awareness in the last two years, with nearly a 10% fall in the number of people not knowing the value of their pensions from 39% to 30%.
Kate Smith, Head of Pensions at Aegon said: “It’s very hard to plan for retirement without a full view of your savings and an understanding of what your state pension entitlement is likely to be.
“So it’s concerning that the number of people who have lost track of their pensions has increased slightly. Without the bigger picture people might be setting themselves up for a retirement fall without a clear idea of what their savings are worth. Nowadays the vast majority of jobs come with a pension and as people frequently change jobs it’s all too easy to lose track of your pensions, especially if they are small.
One option to prevent losing track of different pension pots is to combine them with one pension provider but Aegon’s recent survey found only 27% of people would be interested in consolidation.
The top three reasons given for not moving all of their pensions to one provider:
• 46% of people don’t want all their eggs in one basket
• 27% of people don’t know the benefits of moving all their pensions
• 27% don’t want to pay for an adviser
Kate Smith continues: “Pension consolidation won’t be right for everyone, there are merits to not keeping all your eggs in one basket. And some older style pensions will have valuable benefits which may be lost on transfer. It’s notoriously difficult for people to keep track of small pension pots, particularly at the beginning of someone’s working life. Consolidation of small auto-enrolment pots along the way will help people keep track of these.
“Looking to the future, the launch of a pension dashboard in 2019 should simplify the process of finding lost pensions, and has the additional bonus of seeing all your pensions, including the State pension, in one place. The hope is that by making all their pensions more visible people will gradually become more interested in pensions, and in time start to make more active decisions to start to get them ready for retirement.
“It should also make it simpler to consolidate in future, but people don’t have to wait until then to get their pensions in order. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) pension tracing service can already help people find lost or forgotten pensions they built up many years ago.”
“While we wait for the rollout of the Pension Dashboard in 2019, there are some simple steps you can take to get your pensions in order.”
Get your pensions in order with 4 simple steps:
1. Use the DWP Pensions tracing service to find your pension by entering your old employer’s name which will generate the current contact address. Simply write to this address, with your current and any previous name, current and previous addresses and your National Insurance number. Go here:
2. Some pension schemes won’t have been updated for some time. To get the contact details you will need to fill out an online form with your name , email address and any information you believe is relevant such as the dates you were at the company and your national insurance number.
3. Get a State pension forecast, either in paper format or online www.gov.uk/check-state-pension
4. And once you’ve tracked down your pensions, get advice before consolidating them to make sure you don’t lose out on any valuable benefits.
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