National Pension Tracing Day 29 October

This Sunday 29 October is National Pension Tracing Day.

Research tells us that last year, 2.8 million lost pension pots with a total value worth £26.6 billion, were sitting in funds across the UK waiting to be claimed. The National Pension Tracing Day Campaign is aimed to help people find these retirement benefits that they are entitled to.

We also know that according to the Ministry of Defence’s Armed Forces Pension Scheme Annual Report 2023, that over 17,000 Armed Forces Pensions remain unclaimed!

We have been campaiging on this for some time in the hope we can reunite more veterans with their unclaimed, deferred pension benefits.

Here are some simple questions and links, for any Veteran who thinks they may be entitiled and don’t know where to begin:

Have you served and think you might have entitlements to an Armed Forces Pension? For more click here.

Do you know the rules around preserved/deferred pensions? For more click here.

If you’re eligible do you know who does what and how to claim? For more click here.

Our Chief Executive, Major General Neil Marshall OBE, has this message:

“We can all play our part in encouraging Veterans we know, to come forward if they have not claimed their preserved pensions or preserved lump sums. These can be significant amounts of money. For example, a preserved pension of £1,500 for someone who left in April 1985, would now have a value of £4,500 pa.

Anyone serving after April 1975, now aged 60 or over, could have an unclaimed pension. AFPS pensions earned before April 2005 are payable at age 60 but will not be paid automatically – they have to be applied for. We urge you to encourage anyone who might be eligible, to visit the Veterans’ Gateway website without delay. Of course the Government  also has a role to play in signposting the issue to the Veterans’ community, and we continue to encourage them to do just that.”

We hope this helps get you started on your ‘claiming journey’, and we encourage you our Members and followers to join our camapign, and share our message to help our Veterans receive the benefits they are entitled to.

Finally, if you or your family, and friends think they might have private or other workplace pensions and don’t know where to start looking, check out the National Pension Tracing Day website, which has simple step-by-step guides, success stories, helpful sources and warnings about common pitfalls.

What are you waiting for!