74% of people have never reviewed their UK pension, warns the CEO of deVere Group, one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisations, as new research exposes a blind spot putting UK pension holders’ retirement at risk.
The comments from Nigel Green come as new deVere Group research of more than 750 UK pension holders who have left the UK found that 74% have never reviewed their UK pensions at all.
Only 7% know where all of their UK pensions currently sit. More than two thirds, 68%, worked for three or more UK employers before leaving, meaning multiple pensions could be scattered across old jobs.
More than half, 58%, moved address without telling every pension provider, so statements and updates are still being posted to homes they no longer live in. Despite this, 48% already plan to start drawing on these pensions within 10 years.
Nigel Green, the deVere Group CEO, warns the same neglect almost certainly runs through UK pension holders still living in Britain too, since nothing about ignoring a pension statement requires a passport.
He says: “74% checking nothing is a mirror held up to how the whole country treats pension planning, not a quirk confined to one group living abroad.
“Money that sits untouched for years does not grow itself into a comfortable retirement, wherever the person who owns it happens to be living, and every year that passes without a check turns a manageable gap into a much bigger one.”
The scale of job mobility behind these numbers should alarm any pension holder, at home or abroad.
“Anyone who has worked for three or more employers should assume there are pensions they are not thinking about right now.
“Each job can leave behind a separate pot, a separate provider and a login nobody has used in years. This is standard behaviour among UK pension holders wherever they are based, and it quietly erodes retirement plans on a national scale.”
He continues: “Move house without updating every provider and the paperwork keeps going to an address that no longer exists.
“Annual statements, fund updates, even letters flagging a change in charges vanish into a postbox nobody checks anymore.
“People assume their pension is being managed. In reality, the provider doesn’t even know where they currently live, and that failure is just as common inside the UK as outside it.”
Nigel Green says the most alarming number in this research is the gap between people’s plans and their preparation.
He explains: “Nearly half of this group expect to start drawing on these pensions inside 10 years, yet the overwhelming majority have never sat down and reviewed what they actually hold.
“This is a countdown, not a comfortable planning window, and it applies to every UK pension holder heading towards retirement, not only the ones who happen to have moved abroad. A decade sounds like a long runway until you realise most people have never checked what is on it.”
The fix starts with visibility, not guesswork, and warns the true scale of forgotten UK pensions is almost certainly far larger than this research alone can show.
“Before anyone can make a decision about a pension, they need to know it exists, where it sits and what it is worth,” comments the CEO.
“Right now, the vast majority of people can’t answer any of those questions with confidence, and every one of them is one lost provider letter away from a pension that becomes very hard to trace.”
The deVere CEO concludes: “This is a live crisis running through every corner of the UK’s pension system, not a niche problem confined to expats.
“Every year of inaction makes the eventual task larger and the potential loss greater.
“Anyone who has ever paid into a UK pension, wherever they live now, should be asking themselves right now whether they could actually locate every pot they have built up, because the evidence says most people simply can’t.”
