I accumulated a small company pension in the mid 1980s with a company called Intercontinental Medical Statistics.
I have tried all the conventional methods to trace this money but without success.
The question I would like to ask is why, when I have an Employee Benefit Statement from a British insurance company, I cannot trace the pension?
The difficulty appears to stem from the fact that the insurance company concerned, Norwich Union, is no longer in business.
However, it is known that the pension assets of NU were taken over, it’s just that no-one can tell me who controls them now. I wonder how many others are in this difficulty.
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![Treasure hunt: Steve Webb goes on the trail of a long lost pension for a This is Money reader](https://topnews.media/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/83501599-0-image-a-1_1712828457348.jpg)
Treasure hunt: Steve Webb goes on the trail of a long lost pension for a This is Money reader
Steve Webb replies: As you know, you contacted us about this missing pension before Christmas, and since then we have been on a detective hunt spanning multiple pension providers, multiple pension administrators and even multiple continents.
By sharing your story, I hope that we can help other people to track down missing pensions, even though to date the hunt for your pension continues.
Tip 1. Start with the paperwork
The best place to start in hunting down a lost pension is always any official paperwork that you hold.
This can include vital detail like policy numbers which make the job of tracing lost pensions much easier. For this reason it’s vital that, even today, people keep all correspondence regarding their pensions rather than throwing it away.
In your case you have a statement from 1986 showing that you had a workplace pension run by Norwich Union.
Norwich Union changed its name in 2009 to Aviva, so we started off by contacting them.
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The paperwork also mentioned that life insurance under the scheme was provided by Canada Life, so you also contacted them, but unfortunately the firm had no records for you.
Tip 2. Follow the people administering your pension
Aviva was helpful and replied saying that a couple of years after your statement was issued, back in 1988, this scheme was moved.
The investments were moved to a company called Confederation Life (of which more later), and the administration and records went to a company called Willis consulting.
As there is now a big pension consulting company called Willis Towers Watson, it seemed worth going there next to see if it held any records.
WTW kindly replied saying that the business of Willis consulting was sold in 1996 to another firm called Buck consulting.
I contacted Buck who told us of some rather complicated deals whereby in 1993 the IMS pension scheme was incorporated by another scheme – the Dun & Bradstreet scheme – but that in 1997 there was a demerger.
Buck only administers the Dun & Bradstreet scheme, and it said that another company – Capita – appears to administer the IMS(UK) scheme.
Tip 3. Try the Government’s pension tracing service
If you type ‘trace lost pension’ into a search engine you will be offered a lot of commercial tracing services.
It’s vital that, even today, people keep all correspondence regarding their pensions rather than throwing it away
However, the Government offers a (quite limited) Pension Tracing Service which is in essence a kind of glorified telephone directory.
The Government site asks various questions and tries to identify an up-to-date contact.
In the case of your former employer, a search on the government site (which is free of charge) also pointed us towards Capita – the same firm suggested by Buck.
Unfortunately, however, when you contacted Capita it simply said that it had no record of a pension in your name. So it seemed like a dead end.
As it turns out, it seems that the scheme on the Government’s pension tracing service was only for people who worked for your company after 1997, so this is not the scheme in which you held any rights.
Tip 4. Follow the money
Having drawn a blank tracking down the records and administration of the scheme, it seemed worth trying to find where the money had gone.
We had been told that the policy transferred to Confederation Life but it turns out that it went into liquidation in 1994.
The liquidator was a well-known firm called KPMG and it directed you to a Canadian company which KPMG said had bought up the pensions business of Confederation Life.
STEVE WEBB ANSWERS YOUR PENSION QUESTIONS
However, when the Canadian company dug into its archives they found that it had only bought the Canadian policies of Confederation Life, and that the UK policies had been bought by a company called Sun Life of Canada.
A bit of research on Sun Life of Canada (UK) revealed that it had recently been taken over by a company called Phoenix, which holds a large number of what are known in the pensions industry as ‘legacy’ pension policies.
Phoenix responded very quickly to our inquiries but said that it had searched its records and could find no reference to your old scheme.
Tip 5. Use your own networks
Having drawn a blank on all of these avenues, we did discuss whether you were still in touch with anyone whom you worked with at the time.
Just one person who was receiving a pension from the scheme today would be enough to find contact details and hopefully find your lost pension.
Unfortunately, you were working at the company around 40 years ago and by now you have lost touch with former colleagues.
Conclusion: Don’t give up
I know that you have been trying to locate your pension for more than a decade and it’s great that you haven’t given up.
We certainly have a clearer idea of some of the story of what happened since the mid 1980s, though ultimately have still hit a brick wall.
But even going through all the various letters we have received has given me one or two last avenues to try.
Hopefully for many people the story of their missing pension will be a lot less involved than yours and some of these tips will help them to track down the money that is rightfully theirs.
I’ll be discussing more about how to track down lost pension pots on ITV’s Tonight programme which goes out this Thursday (18 April) at 8.30pm on ITV1.
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