I tried to track down my UK pension funds. This is why I failed.

Monday, 22 December 2025

Tracking down her UK pension funds didn't go according to plan for Gill South.

Gill South is a freelance business writer who has authored a book on personal finance and written for many major publications in New Zealand.

OPINION: As I mentioned in my earlier column, I have a long to-do list to get myself financially ready for retirement with my 60s just around the corner. And one of the things that truly has been weighing on my mind has been the question, do I have any private pension funds in the UK from my time working there in the 90s?

So I found out the pension fund managers for the companies I worked at the longest during my 11 years or so in the UK during the 1990s, by going to a British government website called FindPensionContacts.

You put in the company name you worked for and if the company has one, it gives you the pension scheme administrator handling this company’s pension scheme, their contact details, possibly an email and maybe a phone number.

So far so good. I sat down with a cup of tea and a fortifying piece of chocolate on Tuesday evening at 9.30pm – not a time of the day when I shine - and rang the first pension fund administrator.

Gill South is an experienced freelance writer.

I had to give my National Insurance number, (which I have, amazingly thanks to my organised husband) my date of birth, and my postcode to its system before getting through to a real person. With the postcode, I just gave my NZ one, and that still got me through to a person at the organisation.

After a quick search found I was not in the scheme, she said that I wouldn’t have been offered the scheme until I had been with the company for at least two years. And looking at my CV – I was there not quite two years so that figures.

Still worth checking out the other pension fund administrator of a company where I had worked for slightly over three years, I thought.

When I called the next number, it said it wasn’t in service yet. So I took a breath, sent an email to a good friend who I worked with at the company and asked if she could investigate for me.

She came up with an email address from a mutual friend, I managed to get a phone number after sending an email, and Wednesday night I made another call.

Once again, I was told that I wasn’t in the system for the pension scheme. So, no party at my place that night.

My efforts will probably add a few dollars to my monthly mobile bill but that’s one thing I’ve ticked off on my list of retirement readiness.

Understanding the pension scheme

I sat down with a good contact, Hugh Stevens (former head of SmartShares, now known as Smart) on Wednesday to talk about New Zealanders, our overseas pension schemes and how we get ourselves tied up in knots in our peripatetic lives.

As co-owner and CEO of i-Select, Hugh’s firm specialises in helping people bringing private UK pensions to New Zealand, and pensions from other countries too. They help find the funds (no late-night phone calls necessary for you) and i-Select has two superannuation funds that clients can put their funds into when the money is transferred.

Hugh made me feel I was not a duffer that I didn’t know if I had a pension savings in a scheme over there or not. So much about us facing our fears with our personal finances reflects a low level feeling of embarrassment, that we’ve dropped the ball somehow.

My lack of knowledge on whether I had any private pension funds in the UK was a completely normal start to my journey, he said kindly, and admitted he hadn’t investigated it fully himself.

He corrected the information that I wouldn’t be able to collect my NZ pension if I didn’t find any extra pension funds in the UK first. Fortunately that’s not true, he said.

The people who can help

There are three types of groups who will help you find your overseas private pension funds, he tells me, and this may help to some of you.

They are specialist transfer agents in NZ or the UK who are not financial advisers. They’re independent specialists helping people through the process. They’ll charge a fee for the transfer of the funds and they might find a fund in NZ to put the money into too.

Then there are financial advisers, some whom do mainly pension transfers and then manage the money for you. Or they’re financial advisers who are just generally helping a client with their wealth management, and part of that wealth is in the UK or on an island somewhere.

Lastly the third group is like i-Select, a licensed fund manager and superannuation scheme provider which has a team who will go and find your pension funds for you in an overseas country free of charge. They make their money by charging management fees of the superannuation scheme like any other fund manager.

My big surprise

I may have failed to find any pots of gold in the UK, but this process did remind me that I am a British citizen, ( I know, I had genuinely forgotten) something that came about after the obscure visa I was on in the UK led to residency and then citizenship.

This means, particularly after paying around 10 years of National Insurance over there in the 1990s, I could be eligible for the British pension. I’ll be looking into this in the New Year.

Merry Christmas everyone – and don’t worry I’ll do the New Year’s resolutions for you.

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