How do I check my pension?

If you want to have an idea of how much money you’ll be living off when you stop working, it’s important to check your pension

That means the state pension, workplace pension, and any private pensions you may have set up.

Not only will this show you the amount of money you’re in line to receive, it can also help you adjust your savings plans if the amount is smaller than you’d like it to be.

You may also find money you had forgotten about. There’s an estimated £31.1 billion worth of assets in lost pension pots, according to the Pensions Policy Institute, where the pension provider has lost contact with the pension holder – but it’s easy to trace these and claim your money back.

Here we explain how to check your different pension pots and why consolidating your pots might be a good idea. 

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How to check your state pension 

You can check your state pension on the Gov.uk website. You’ll need to enter a few details, including your name, address and national insurance number, or you can sign in with your HMRC Government Gateway account. You can then check how much you’re set to receive, when you can start claiming this, and you may be able to make additional contributions.

If you don’t want to use the online tool, you can fill in, print and post a BR19 application form and send it by post or you can call the Future Pension Centre on 0800 731 0175 and they can post these details to you.

How to check your workplace pension

If you have an online account with your workplace pension provider, you can simply log into it and see your pension forecast. It will also send an annual statement to you with these details.

You can also see how much your contributions are on your payslip. These will usually be listed as deductions and your contributions will be under ‘EE’ for employee contributions while employer contributions will be listed as ‘ER’.

How to check your private pension

If you have set up a private pension, or have one left over from an old job, you’ll need to do one of the following to check how much money is in it, and how much it’s predicted to grow by the time you retire:

• Log into an online account
• Check your annual pension statement
• Contact your pension provider and ask it for these details

How to check your NHS pension

You can check the amount in an NHS pension by logging into the My NHS Pension portal. To log into this, you’ll need to give a few details including your national insurance number, name, date of birth and your eight-digit NHS pension member number which you can find on a payslip.

When you have logged in, you’ll be able to see the current value of your NHS pension pot and the forecasted amount you’ll have when you retire. You can also check all of your personal details are correct – especially if anything has changed such as if you have moved jobs or home. 

How to find lost pension pots 

It’s estimated there are more than £30 billion worth of assets currently sitting in lost pension pots. Since the introduction of auto-enrolment, employers have been required to set up automatic pension pots for most employees. But this means lots of workers have several small pots from different jobs, and some of these may have been lost  – which means the pension provider can’t get in touch with the pension holder.

However, it’s free and easy to trace old pensions and claim back any money. You can do it in a few different ways.

If you have old paperwork or emails from a previous provider, you can contact them directly and find out the value of the pension. If you’re struggling to contact a provider, there’s also a free tracing service from Gov.uk which should give you their details.

We explain the process fully in our guide to tracking down lost pensions.  

How to consolidate your pension pots

If you have lots of different pension pots with different providers you could consolidate these, which can make them easier to manage – as you’ll just have one pot to check.

To do this you will usually need to contact your previous pension providers and request for them to make a transfer, to a new pension pot. They may need additional details from you for this but the process is usually very straightforward.

Consolidating your pension pots means you only need to look at one provider and account to see how much you have in your retirement fund, and how much you can expect it to grow. You are also only paying one pension provider for fees – such as annual management charges if there are any. However, this service is only for private and workplace pensions, and there may be fees involved for transferring.