Pension from previous employment & company now closed

I worked in a company 22 years ago, which closed its doors about 15 years ago.

I was wondering how would I go about finding out if I held a pension during the couple of years I worked there.

Probably seems very unresponsible of me to not know but I had very different priorities then!

If the Company is closed you could:
- contact any former colleagues to see if they got any pension entitlements
- do you have any employment contract which might have men a Pension Scheme
- if you had any Pension entitlement you should have gotten some written confirmation when you left
- if you have any old payslips, do they mention any contributions deducted for the Pension Scheme
- perhaps you could contact the Pensions Authority to see if they have any record of a Company Pension Scheme and who the Trustees/Fund Manager might have been.

Do you have any payslips from then that might tell you if pension contributions were being paid. Are you in contact with any former colleagues that might have been paying into any pension in that company?

Aside from that, I haven't used any but there are pension tracing services provided by various brokers. If you google tracing pensions you will get a few names. There isn't a state tracing service in place so they would be your best bet. Aside from that the Pensions Authority also keep a register of all schemes but you would need some specific details in order to find where the scheme of your former employer ended up. They won't have your name against a pension scheme so they can't answer your question directly.

Don't forget, if you did make any contributions, they are still yours so you are entitled to them and they are worth investing some time and effort in tracking them down.

There's only five major pension companies these days, so it's likely that you would have been in one of them. If you draw a blank with any of the above suggestions, ring around Irish Life, Aviva, New Ireland, Zurich Life and Standard Life and they should be able to look up their computers to see if they can find you. Them and Mercer.

I'd run with @Conan 's suggestion of the Pension Authority to trace this.

Fill in the Contact Form with as much detail as possible and they should be able to help.

Gerard

www.prsa.ie

Thank you all. I haven't a scrap of info from my time employed in that company. I have moved a few times since then so paper trail has been thinned considerably over the years! I will try all above options and see if I have any luck.

Am I wrong to assume that an annual statement should be issued to the address I was at during that period. I haven't gotten any correspondence or maybe thats not a requirement of pension providers?

As far as I know issuing annual statements to deferred members (people who are not still working at the company and paying into the pension scheme) is not obligatory but they have to send you one on request. It would be good practice to send one to you annually but not obligatory. I'm open to correction on this.

Dave Vanian said:

There's only five major pension companies these days, so it's likely that you would have been in one of them. If you draw a blank with any of the above suggestions, ring around Irish Life, Aviva, New Ireland, Zurich Life and Standard Life and they should be able to look up their computers to see if they can find you. Them and Mercer.

Click to expand...

Or even put in a subject access request to each of them.