What happens to your pension when you change jobs?

Finding a new job can be exciting... but don’t lose track of your old job's pension

- By ELLA WALKER

IT can feel like hard work keeping on top of pension admin. It means many of us aren’t entirely sure what pots we have stashed anyway - especially if we’ve moved jobs a lot.

We grilled Senior Policy and Propositions Manager at the Money and Pensions Service, Adam Gifford, on how to be pension-savvy when you leave a job or start a new one...

First things first

There are two main types of pension (more of which later). But whatever kind you have, Adam says when you change jobs, “the first thing you should do is check and make sure your contact details with your pension provider are up to date”. This will make “losing” your pension much more difficult.

“Your pension is often set up based on your employment details, so your work email address, but obviously when you leave, that’s no longer necessarily where you want your emails going,” notes Adam.

“So go in and make sure your address, contact number and email are up to date with the pension provider. It’s useful to update your nomination - where or who you want your benefits to be paid to if something were to happen to you.”

And if you have absolutely no idea where your pensions are, and no clue what contact details are on them, use the Government’s pension tracing service: gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details.

You may have pots with small amounts in, if you were only in a job a short while, but Adam says it’s worth tracking all of them down.

“Where we've got pots of less than £1,000, the Government is looking to try and ensure that they do just move across and get consolidated over time,” he says.”

Defined contribution pensions