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Mrs Eileen Spence and her husband Peter: A pension worth thousands of dollars was finally found after a decade-long search
I built up a small company pension in the mid-1980s with a company called Intercontinental Medical Statistics, to A reader of This is Money asked in a previous column about Finding lost pensions by Steve Webb.
I have tried all conventional methods to trace this money but to no avail.
The question I would like to ask is why, when I have an employee benefits statement from a UK insurance company, I cannot trace the pension?
The difficulty appears to arise from the fact that the insurance company in question, Norwich Union, is no longer in business.
However, it is known that NU’s pension assets were confiscated, but no one can tell me who controls them now. I wonder how many others are in this situation.
SCROLL DOWN TO FIND OUT HOW TO ASK STEVE HIS PENSION ISSUE
Steve Webb answers: The saga of trying to locate his missing pension has been going on for a long time.
You began your search for your pension over a decade ago when you retired, and it was late last year that you first came into contact with This is Money.
In April of this year I wrote a column in which I told the story so far, but without any trace: Steve Webb’s top five tips for finding antique pots.
However, I am happy to say that your pension has been found and you have regained your right to it!
I thought regular readers of my column might be interested in knowing the outcome.
In the process of trying to locate his pension fund, we tried a variety of tactics, including contacting the different organisations that had administered his pension and contacting the different pension providers who had been responsible for it.
The experience of searching for my pension led me to summarize different strategies for finding lost pensions in a free guide published by my company LCP.
Do you have a question for Steve Webb? Scroll down to find out how to contact him
One of the tips in the guide is to think about the employer who was linked to the pension.
Although his former employer has changed its name, an internet search suggested the business is now owned by a company called IQVIA.
I probably should have contacted them earlier, but I initially assumed that as a multinational company with offices all over the world, the chances of them getting back to me, let alone having any information on a UK pension from the 1980s, would be pretty slim.
However, I did manage to find the contact details for the IQVIA Pension Manager, who was really helpful.
It turned out that they still had a pension for you, but there was some confusion because it was in the name of a Mr. E. Spence and you, of course, are Mrs. E. Spence.
When you yourself called the pension administrators some time ago, they failed to detect that there was another member with your surname and other matching details and wrongly told you that there was no pension.
So here’s another tip for finding lost pensions. If you contact a scheme you’re sure you were a member of, but the administrators can’t find you in the system, ask if it’s possible to run a search for a match based on just some of your details, to see if there’s another member whose details match yours in every other way.
If your name is often misspelled, you can also check them for common typos.
It may take some polite persistence to get a plan to do this on your behalf, but a letter requesting this search and including other key details they can verify, such as date of birth and period of employment, could do the trick.
I am pleased to say that in your case, IQVIA’s pension administrator has investigated the matter and you have now received a letter setting out your options and also offering a payment in recognition of the “distress and inconvenience” you have faced.
Her options included receiving a payment of more than a decade’s worth of unpaid pension payments or collecting it all in one lump sum, totalling thousands of pounds, which she has decided to do.
He told me he was delighted with the outcome, saying: “When you consider that just a month or so ago I considered I had lost my pension, the turnaround in my fortunes has literally been astonishing.”
I’m glad I could help!
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