Pension transfers can take 10 days, so why are some taking six months?

James Rowe: For many of us, doing admin on our pensions isn’t exactly the most exciting job in the world, but transferring or combining your pots can come with big advantages. But for those of us who want to do it, why is the process still so painful? Let’s find out on this episode of Which? Money.

James Rowe: Hello, it’s James Rowe in the Which? studio this week. Thanks to Erica and to Rob for manning the fort for the past couple of weeks. And alongside me from Which? Money, Ruby Flanagan. Ruby, hello.

Ruby Flanagan: Hello!

James Rowe: How are you?

Ruby Flanagan: Grand, yeah.

James Rowe: Lovely stuff. Nice to have you here. And also, Lisa Picardo, Chief Business Officer at PensionBee. Lisa, hello.

Lisa Picardo: Hi! Thanks for having me.

James Rowe: Likewise, good to have you here. Now, Ruby, we’re going to be talking about pension transfers today because of the article you’ve written for the latest issue of the Which? Money magazine. We often talk about pension transfers, but only in passing on the podcast. So, what are they, and I guess why would someone want to do it?

Ruby Flanagan: So, a pension transfer is when you move your pension from one provider to another, or you can consolidate them, which is moving one or two different pensions into one. Why someone would want to do it – I’d say because there are so many different pension providers out there, so you may want to move to another one because of fees, investment options, benefits that they offer, app usage that you may not have to log on online. So, it’s very simply moving one pension to another provider. That’s it.

James Rowe: Yeah, and I guess another point is about the ease of having all of your pensions in one place. That can be a benefit, can’t it? Of moving all of your pots into one provider and you only have to remember one login to find out where all of your pension pots are.

Lisa Picardo: Yeah, that’s it. And if you take a step back, auto-enrolment in the UK has been a really positive thing – because it’s meant that more and more people are saving into a pension – but every time you move a job, you will accumulate a new pension pot. And so most people will end up with, I think the DWP statistic is 11 pots in a lifetime – 11 jobs, 11 pots. And so it becomes really complex to manage. So, just as Ruby said, a lot of reasons why people want to move from provider to provider – they want to pull it all into one place to give them a fighting chance of really being able to manage their money so that they have a view of what the investments is, so that they can invest in line with their goals and their values. They might be in search of better returns, lower fees, better technology, better customer service. There’s a long list of reasons why people want to move provider and why they might want to have it all in one place.

James Rowe: Let’s talk about transferring your pension then, because it is getting more and more popular. 1.5 million people did it in 2024, and that was a 50% increase on two years beforehand. And then 1.7 million people did it in 2025. And that’s despite the fact that it can be a very slow process.

Ruby Flanagan: I was going to say because these figures – this doesn’t even show the whole picture. We don’t know this because this is just figures from Origo, which is a data company which a lot of pension providers use to transfer and move money across. So, this is just their figures of how many pension providers and people use that service in particular. So, if a provider didn’t use it – say through a paper-based transfer system – that won’t be recorded in that data. So, it is – even though it is rising – that still only paints quite a small picture of how many people exactly have moved it. But it is going up just for the last few years. And it’s expected, I think Origo, when I asked, they’re expecting it to rise significantly, particularly when the pensions dashboard becomes live, which is set for maybe the end of this year, maybe next year. We’ll see.

James Rowe: Again, another thing we’ve mentioned a lot of times on the podcast is the pensions dashboard, which again is supposed to make this whole process a bit easier, right Lisa?

Lisa Picardo: Well, I think it will do. I think it’s going to be the first time that people are going to be able to log in to a portal and they’re going to be able to see all of their savings in one place. So, they’ll see their State Pension, they’ll see their workplace pension that they’re saving into, and they’ll see all of their other pots alongside. So, inevitably it’s going to lead to them wanting to do something – because managing multiple pots, whether you’re in accumulation and saving or whether you’re at the point of access, is incredibly difficult. So, yes, I think it will come into view, as Ruby said, maybe sometime next year and it will be a really important moment. Consumers will be reunited with lost and forgotten pots, they will want to take action, and they’ll have their policy numbers to hand. So, that’s going to make that journey of transferring a lot easier, which is why the system really needs to work well.

James Rowe: And I guess at this point, the system – I think it would be fair to say the system doesn’t necessarily work too well – because of how slow it can be. Let’s just do some stats and facts here. The Pensions Schemes Act states that it can allow six months for a pension transfer to happen. But, Ruby, you’ve spoken to some Which? members to find out how long it’s happening in reality for real-life humans.

Ruby Flanagan: So, that legislation is the only piece of legislation which dictates a time frame of how fast it has to be done. But it’s kind of a bit redundant now just because it was over 30 years ago. Everything’s changed since it first came in. So, I reached out to a lot of Which? members who had a lot of people had issues with pension transfers – ranging from three or four months to one case study, John, who I spoke to, that took 15 months. During that time, he has a Parkinson’s diagnosis, he had a lot of health conditions that added stress onto his life. So, all he wanted to do was just move a pension. And this was a DC pension – so a defined contribution pension. So, that is technically one of the easier ones to move because there’s not the caveats of benefits through it – say like a guaranteed pension age, DB pensions – they’re a little bit more tricky to move. But DCs should be the easier one. So, it took 15 months. He eventually got it done, but he did say that there were times where he thought, "Am I being scammed? Is this what’s going – is it supposed to be this arduous?" Thankfully, as I said, he did get it sorted. But during the process, he struggled with his sleep, his health was in decline. It was just a really turbulent time for him that was a bit of stress that wasn’t needed.

James Rowe: Lisa, when – I appreciate this is only one story and it’s a very small snapshot – but when you hear stories like this, you must just have your head in your hands, right? To think this shouldn’t be happening.

Lisa Picardo: No, it shouldn’t be happening, absolutely right. And we’ve been doing pension transfers for 10 years now in the UK. So, we have a really good view of where it’s working well and where it’s not working well. At the good end of the scale, you see a lot of providers who are able to use electronic transfer methods and work well to move pensions in five to 10 days. So, that happens already on mass. It’s doable, it’s achievable. And then at the bad end of the scale, you see some providers who often use third-party administrators where it is taking months and months as a matter of routine. And those averages of three, four, five months can hide even worse experiences for consumers. So, yes, sometimes we see really difficult situations for consumers.

Ruby Flanagan: I think this is where you have the spectrum of things. There are quick pension transfers. There are obviously some that are going to be a little bit more difficult depending on the investments that are in there, things like this. But it can be done. And it’s the fact that we are still seeing these longer delays when it is possible to move them in an appropriate time frame. So, the fact that we’re still seeing them of this length at all, really, when we’ve got the capability to get things done a little bit smoother and a little bit quicker.

James Rowe: Yeah, and I mean, looking at some of the stats from the survey you did of Which? members – 31% of them said it did only take one month, which is fantastic. But then you look at some more of your stats there, Ruby – 42% – so we’re looking at nearly half of them – said the process was difficult, which is not ideal. Why on earth is it like this?

Lisa Picardo: It really doesn’t need to be. We found that a lot of people say it’s actually the second most difficult task after moving house. And remembering that your pension pot is probably your biggest pot of wealth outside of your home, it really does matter. I think there’s a lot of reasons why transfers in the bad end of the market let’s say aren’t working well. I think it goes back to legislation, which as we said is really out of date. It just hasn’t kept pace with the rest of the financial services industry. You can move your bank account in days, you can move your ISA in weeks. Why is it that the pension takes so long? I think it does go back to people hiding behind the six-month rule. So, I think that what was intended to be let’s say a backstop has become the norm and it’s become acceptable for some people. I think there are also, as well as the need to adopt electronic processes and just generally modernise, I think there are also issues around the transfer regulations which were brought in in 2021. And that basically set up a traffic light system and it was focused on preventing pension scams – and that is an admirable aim – but what it’s inadvertently done is it’s slowed a lot of transfers. Because it means that if you are a ceding provider – so you’re letting a pension go out the door – you can put up flags for reasons like fees or incentives or presence of overseas investments in a fund – which by the way, every modern fund who, a global index, is going to have. So, the legislation allows them to flag transfers. And that puts consumers into a real spiral of scams questionnaires, scams calls, MoneyHelper appointments. And you can just see how the days go to be weeks, go to be months and basically a lot of people end up quite overwhelmed, anxious, confused. They just throw their hands up and they give up, which is not an outcome we want to see.

Ruby Flanagan: Which was about 10% of the people who had done transfers for Which? members in the last three years had given up moving it due to that. So, that’s a fair few people from when we asked. But there’s also this thing with the scam legislation. It needs to be there. There needs to be protections in place because this is large pots of money. So, you can’t just be flipping it about and "I’m going to move it here, I’m going to move it there, I’m going to move it over here." There has to be protections in place to protect the sum of money. But it’s the fact that what we call sludge practices – it’s just being used incorrectly. It’s just being put in place when there actually is no flags being shown, but it’s almost like an automatic – a foreign investment, the flag goes up immediately and then the delays come. So, even though that would be maybe one of the really common foreign investments to have, that’s what’s slowing things down because they’re not being utilised in the right way. So, I think that’s an important thing – that scam protections do need to be in place, but they’re just being misused quite a lot during particularly within transfers.

Lisa Picardo: I think it’s about taking a – a lot of providers or administrators just don’t seem to be able to take a proportionate or a risk-based approach. So, they go back to the letter of the law and it ends up being delays for a lot of people.

James Rowe: And also, I guess the fraud side of things, the scam side of things slows things down. But also, is it also the fact that these firms aren’t exactly modernising with the times? Because am I right in saying that some providers still require what is the term – is it a wet signature? Is that the term? They require a real pen-to-paper to do these things. I mean, in what other businesses are we still using pen-to-paper?

Ruby Flanagan: I think we had a discussion about this, about pension industries can be quite archaic in their practices. I think it was – we mentioned about filing systems. Like nothing’s automatically electronic. There are some providers that are still using paper-based systems so it does require letters and this, which obviously take a while. Whenever we’re waiting on a letter, it always takes longer than you want it to be. But yeah, being that process as well of being – they need a signature from you. The letter gets sent out. The letter arrives. You then have to go through the information that they want, provide what they need, write it all down, get it in, you sign it, and then you send it back – small delay. Then they’ll take over. And then inevitably at one point it will be "You’ve missed out something in this. We need to resend you that letter." And they resend it back. So, it’s just a process. Particularly ones that do rely on having to have a pen-to-paper, it feels mad. I think I signed my tenancy agreement on my laptop on my Mac and that was it. And that was where I live. So, it’s just a really bizarre concept that you need to have a letter to get all these details in when it could be done electronically.

James Rowe: There’s so much technology that can allow us to sign something digitally. You say you’ve signed something on your Mac. I remember once I signed something where it was on my laptop and I could scan a code with my phone and then I could use my finger to sign it and then air-drop it from an Apple device to the laptop and then it was on the document. I mean…

Lisa Picardo: All the systems, all the processes, all the technology exists and is well-used in every other part of financial services. So, there really is no excuse. I think what is missing is that impetus to do it. And again, what we see is that people aren’t driven by voluntary things, voluntary initiatives. They struggle to have traction in the really bad ends of the market and so what you need is strong regulation and legislation to encourage them to move quicker and then all of these things will get picked up.

James Rowe: Well, speaking about legislation then, let’s go back to 2015 because that was a big year from two sides of the coin. First of all, Pension Freedoms.

Lisa Picardo: Pension Freedoms, yeah. So, in 2015, there was a big moment, I think, for consumers in the UK where they didn’t have to buy an annuity anymore and they could actually access their pensions flexibly from the age of 55. And so they could take tax-free cash, they could draw down income flexibly, or they could withdraw the entire thing. And so with that came the need for safeguarding and advice in certain situations, etc. So, I think a lot happened then in terms of consumer choice and control, but yeah, it did need to be met with protections as well.

James Rowe: And then on the flip side of things, that’s when the FCA – so the Financial Conduct Authority – got involved in the – they raised a bit of a red flag, didn’t they, in 2015?

Ruby Flanagan: It was 2015 where they mentioned this could slow down pension transfers. We could be – it’s a lot of pressure on an industry. When people have the flexibility to decide what to do with their money, then they noted at the time that we could have an issue with pension transfers here. Might delay things, things could be slow, we should probably look into it. And we’re in 2026 and we’re still having the issues. It’s not really much has happened and changed. There’s been things coming in – sort of the scam checks and legislation in 2021 – but that was when it was first mentioned by the regulator, but not much has been done in terms of regulating the industry within transfers.

James Rowe: Why has nothing changed in that amount of time since 2015?

Lisa Picardo: I think there have been some positive improvements. So, let’s look at the good picture. I think things like electronic transfer methods – Origo, 80% of defined contribution pension transfers happen using this platform and so there are good things that have moved forward. But the market is difficult because you have lots of different types of schemes and you have multiple regulators. So, you have the FCA and you have the TPR. And what the industry needs is a single approach really. Because from a consumer perspective, most consumers are struggling to know where their pots are. They certainly have no visibility on who regulates that pot. And it feels completely arbitrary – I mean, I’ve done it myself and done a few pension transfers and I’ve had a really great experience and a really terrible experience. And why is that? Why should it be that way? It doesn’t need to be. So, I think you do have this problem of quite a fragmented landscape, which means that it’s quite difficult to implement change unless you have both regulators or the DWP setting the rules for everybody.

Ruby Flanagan: And I think that’s – I mentioned in the article – there is no set rules in place about it because there’s so many different areas. So, like just for one example is that there’s the STAR initiative, which firms can voluntarily sign up to. And they then provide STAR with data on their transfers and how – and then STAR give them an accreditation of how well it is. This is customer feedback, this is how quick the transfer was, what problems came up. But that’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it. And when you have to volunteer to do something, you don’t have to follow it. You don’t have to – if you like, "Oh, you can do this if you want to." And it’s "I don’t want to. Don’t need to." So, of all the FCA registered pension providers and administrators and all this, not many of them are signed up to STAR. I think at the time of writing, I think it was about 80 firms had voluntary signed up to provide this data. But there’s like over 200 registered firms. So, we’re a long way off. So, it’s less than half. So, it again just doesn’t touch the surface. It’s there, the concept is there, and STAR are aware of this in the feature I was – I chatted to them, went into detail about the work they’re doing. They’re expanding their scope of checking transfer times to paper-based ones within the next year and they’re hoping to publish performance data from providers next year, towards the end of this year, which is great. But it is also that you again just don’t have to do it. If you don’t have to do it, then you won’t. In an industry that is a bit archaic and it’s full of inertia, unless initiatives have teeth – real teeth – it’s quite difficult to pull up the poor end of it.

Ruby Flanagan: And it’s the same thing for Origo transfer times as we talked about earlier. You, if you want to, you can disclose those and those will get shared. But what you tend to find is obviously the better performers will disclose and the poorer ones won’t disclose. And then of course it excludes all of the people who are processing pension transfers with carrier pigeon and wet signatures and all the rest. So…

James Rowe: What do Origo and STAR say about this? Because do they – I guess they don’t necessarily feel this motivation to try and help improve things, or do they?

Ruby Flanagan: STAR – both firms doing it are aware of the problems within the industry with transfer times. Obviously, Origo is separate because it is – it’s not a regulator, it’s a transfer service. Just firms use that service. And really, they don’t actually have to publish any of this data, but they’re doing it. And they’ve acknowledged that yes, electronic transfers are quicker, are easier. The data they provide is accurate, it’s grand. But they don’t need to be doing this. And with STAR, again voluntary, but they’re working and trying to put forward an argument to the FCA that they should use their standard – their standards for their accreditation system – and implement them widely. Have it as an FCA guidelines that you have to be doing X, Y, Z, you have to do this. And they are pushing and trying to do that. And in when a chat I had with them, they were saying that it’s better to have an already implemented system to push that in instead of having to create a brand new one. So, it’s like just take what we’re doing now and just widen the scope and make sure it affects more pension providers, even if it is just FCA ones. And I think that’s the approach they’re going at the moment is to sort of almost pitch an argument that the FCA should incorporate these STAR standards as a whole for the industry then make some brand new ones up, which could take years, as you know how the financial industry is like.

Lisa Picardo: There’s a really important thing that’s also happening in pensions, which is around the value for money framework. And so this is a joint initiative – it’s DWP, TPR, and FCA – and that will provide a framework for the whole of industry ultimately to be able to demonstrate what they do for consumers in all directions. And actually, that’s a really great opportunity to include pension transfer times in a way that everyone then has to be held to account.

James Rowe: And when you say TPR, that’s the Pensions Regulator.

Lisa Picardo: That’s the Pensions Regulator. So, they oversee the occupational schemes, all of the workplace side.

James Rowe: So, that sounds positive then, that things might be moving in the right direction.

Lisa Picardo: It’s not in there yet! It’s a suggestion for how we can kind of have one way of being accountable across industry.

Ruby Flanagan: I think one of the main – because this was published in December 2025 – and they were just proposals of what could be brought in. Not rules in, they’re just proposals. But one of the ones that I noted was how providers – the length of time a provider takes to get back to you about a request. So, at the moment, everyone has their own – every provider has their own sort of working day time limit to respond to either emails or for consumers reaching out. So, some it’s seven working days, some it’s 10 working days. And you don’t really know – they don’t disclose what that is to consumers. So, you could email and be like "I’d like to move this pot away. Can I do that?" And on the pension provider side, they actually don’t have to respond to that request or acknowledge that request within X days – so it could be seven days. If you’ve got a provider that has like 12-day turnaround time, that’s just going to add on the time it takes and they get back to you and you respond immediately and then they don’t have to reply for another 12 days. And that’s something that is prominent within the industry because I spoke to an independent financial adviser who kind of got caught in the middle of this, who is working on behalf of a client, seeing these mad delays but not being able to do anything about it himself because he’s at the behest of these response times. And in the proposals published in December, the FCA, the DWP said that providers should acknowledge requests within two business days and return full information within 10 business days. Having something like that in place would significantly better the industry. Because it gives a – that’s a rule that then could be widespread. If a pension provider has to respond within two business days, brilliant. They all have to do it. That’s great. That should speed up things a little bit. But that’s something I clocked within the publication that was good – as in a positive that kind of addresses things a tiny bit. It’s like a sticking plaster over a gaping wound, but it’s something.

Lisa Picardo: But it needs to bite on TPR firms and it needs to bite on the administrators. Because often you see heavy use of third-party administrators that are unregulated who are in this flow. So – and we know from moving hundreds of thousands of pensions – we know where there are backlogs that build up, we know where response times to providers and consumers are really unacceptable actually. And as Ruby says, like if you have these delays along the way in your process or you’re not operationally staffed enough to cope with it, it can mean that the consumer ultimately is on the end of months of waiting. We’ve got £75 billion worth of pension transfers just last year on Origo.

James Rowe: And PensionBee, you think a pension transfer should or could take 10 days?

Lisa Picardo: Yeah, we absolutely think 10 days is doable and doable at scale. We see that in the data, we see that with lots of large providers who are able to move pensions in that amount of time. So, I think from the beginning of time we’ve been calling for some sort of pension switch guarantee. We think 10 days is doable whereby it would set a very clear expectation for consumers, for advisers, for providers in industry. But there are other things that can be done too. So, this six-month statutory time frame, which I go back to as like it’s what people hide behind, that needs to be picked up and moved. And that would be a really, really effective power move by the government to just fix this once and for all because it transcends what type of scheme you are, it transcends who your regulator is, and it just goes to the root of the problem.

Ruby Flanagan: The most recent Origo data for 2025 was that the average pension transfer was 10.2 days. So, it is – and that’s a DC pension and electronically done – so it is doable. Obviously, there are instances of there are more difficult pensions that are a little bit more complicated, which may need extra time. But if we have a standard set in place and things go past that time, then people can – consumers can expect it done in this time. And if the pension provider or the just goes "These are the reasons why your pension delay – there’s going to be a delay of this time," that gives clarity to the consumer. If they have to explain why the delays are there – it’s because of X, Y, Z, it’s because of a defined benefit pension and there are these benefits that you could potentially lose or it’s a struggle getting this – if we have a set time frame and then they have to be open and honest and clear with the consumer if there is going to be a delay rather than just going "Oh, sorry, there’s a few delays" and the consumer having to reach out and be like "Any update? It’s been three months! I’m like trying to figure this out." Then that would be beneficial just to have a standard set in place and them have to be more clarity about where the delays are coming from and clear to the consumer. We did a petition recently, which had huge support from the public. We got just under 17,000 signatures on it and it was all about electronic transfers and improving processes. And so widespread support. We had a response from the government who also acknowledged that efficient pension transfers were really important. And they actually themselves called out the transfer regulations that we talked about earlier and said, "It is widely understood that that is causing delays and there is a goal to look at that." So, I think that would be a hugely positive step forward because it will take a lot of resource and time that has been spent on things that are really not pension scams and it would be able to redirect them towards true pension scams. So, I think that would be also a really positive step forward.

James Rowe: Are we going to see some significant steps forward to some new regulations or some new standards at any point, do you think? Or is it going to take, I don’t know, a scandal to blow this out of proportion?

Ruby Flanagan: I think the dashboard will be implemented and come in before any change will happen. Because that’s going to open the door to so many more people wanting to transfer pensions and it’s going to shine a spotlight on just how slow and archaic the process is. Particularly with lost pensions where people can’t remember – most recently, I’m doing a piece for Which? about finding my own pensions and I’ve found that I’ve got nine. So, I did all the hard work. I’ve had to go through old emails and documents and trying to figure out – on the phone being like "Do you have a policy number?" and I’m like "No, but I have an email telling me that I have a pension with you. Can I use that?" and they’re like "We need a policy number." So, I’ve done that hard work. But the dashboard will open that up and hopefully my nine pensions will be just in the dashboard – they should be there, they’re all linked to me. So, when you’ve got that process of like they’re all there and you do want to act on it, we will see a rise in people going "Maybe I should merge these two pots that only have maybe two grand in it. Maybe I should move them to another pot." So, we will see an uptick most likely when the dashboard comes in. And I don’t think new rules or regulations will be in place before that happens. It’ll probably be a response to a rise in transfer numbers or delays or something. I don’t think it will be implemented beforehand – I’d like to be proven wrong! Very much proven wrong. But it just doesn’t feel like enough time is – we’ve got enough time for something to be put in place.

James Rowe: So, have you got any advice for anybody who might be in the process right now? You said you spoke to some people who have been in the process for months. So, if there are people listening and they are in this process and seem like they’re at a bit of a roadblock, what should they do?

Ruby Flanagan: What I sort of – when you’re doing the pension transfer, take note of everything. Every call, how long the call was, what was said on it, every correspondent you’ve had. If you can get things in writing, that’s great. Because you’ve got a paper trail then. You can prove there was delays or you can prove there was sort of things went wrong. If the delays continue and persist, you can complain about it. And if you’ve got a case with you that proves like "Well, eight months ago I asked when can you give me an update, can you do this," and they were like "Oh, there’s just a delay. We’ll let you know in it should be done within X amount of time," you’ve got a case then. Because nothing’s in place to impact providers with delays in their – there’s no, as I said, accreditation, nothing like that. You just have to approach it probably building a case anyway. So, if you do experience a mad delay, then you’ve got something to fall back on that you can then complain about to like the Financial Ombudsman – is there the Pensions Ombudsman? Do they do pension delays as well? So, there’s a lot of Ombudsmen you can contact. But there is a complaints form. So, if you are going to attempt a transfer within the next 12 months, I’d probably say what I’m doing for myself doing consolidating a few mine is just almost building a case and then hoping for a good outcome.

James Rowe: And Lisa, would you still encourage people to transfer a pension? Obviously, looking at their providers, weighing up the pros and cons, seeing if there’s any benefits they might lose – would you still encourage them to do it despite all the negatives we’ve spoken about?

Lisa Picardo: Yeah, I think it’s part of good housekeeping, isn’t it? And it’s part of people being able to take control of their savings, make positive decisions, manage better. And that goes both, as I said, through your savings journey when you’re accumulating different pots and struggling to keep on top of them, but also at the point of access when you come to withdraw money. It’s very difficult if you have 10 or 15 pots sitting out there. So, I think there are lots of good reasons. But there are – it may be that you want to find a different type of proposition, it may be that you want to be served in a different way, you may want to have an app on your phone that allows you to engage more and see what money you have. It may be that you want tools and content and lots of different preferences that people have, lots of good reasons for wanting to move provider. I think it’s important that the provider you’re moving to can help you through that journey and can guide you through the various steps that you need to take. It’s important they obviously are advocating for you and trying to pull this money across. But I think for an individual, sometimes you just need to be aware that there are steps you need to take with your ceding provider to help that process along. You may need to do ID, you may need to go through a scams questionnaire. That’s not the fault of the person that you’re moving to, it’s the system that you’re forced to engage with from your ceding provider.

James Rowe: And you would contact the provider you’re moving to?

Lisa Picardo: In the first instance, yes, you’d contact them. You normally have to set up an account, put in your policy number. So, if you have your policy number to hand, that makes things a lot easier, and then they will be able to initiate the transfer on your behalf.

James Rowe: On the benefits of different providers – because some pension providers might offer a certain benefit that the other one doesn’t – is there an easy way to sort of check and weigh up those pros and cons of each provider?

Lisa Picardo: Good providers should be very clear and transparent. So, they should tell you what the funds are that they have, what the costs are – we will do one simple fee so that you know what you are paying – they will signpost all of that information on their website or in their app very well. Sometimes what’s more difficult is understanding what you’re currently invested in through your workplace because you never really did that sign-up journey. And so you may need to do a little bit more work to find that policy documentation or to understand where you’re currently invested and what fees it is that you’re paying. But you should be able to ask your provider all those questions because they are important. Obviously, if you are moving from DB to DC, if that is more than £30,000, then you do need to take advice and there are services out there that can help with guidance and education and you can book a MoneyHelper appointment as well.

James Rowe: Any final thoughts?

Lisa Picardo: I think sometimes it feels all negative and I think it is important to say that there are a lot of providers who are doing this really well. And so there are a lot of – we have taken positive steps forward. But there is a gap that needs to be closed. I think that’s only going to be closed with legislation, frankly, because legislation and regulation is what everyone respects. So, I think we do need to see those moves. I am hopeful that when the dashboard goes live and the volume continues to rise that eventually this will come to the top of the priority list.

Ruby Flanagan: Yeah, we did come across as quite doomy and gloomy for the industry! There is mad innovations going on – again, apps being a thing now. So, there are steps forward, but you’re right, it is just those minorities that there is delays. We can tackle them and we know what’s wrong. I think that’s the main point of it is that everyone’s shouting about it – so many firms and PensionBee being one of them that are like "This is the problem, this should be the solution. Shall we do this? Can we do this? Can we tackle it?" So, it’s not like it’s a mystery. The answer’s there, so it’s just taking the steps now to tackle it, which sometimes is the hardest thing to get off the ground – just those first few steps.

James Rowe: And thankfully there’s people like you who write lovely stories for the Which? Money magazine about why pension transfers are so painful. Money members can read that in the latest issue of the Which? Money magazine. But for now, Ruby, thanks very much.

Ruby Flanagan: Thank you!

James Rowe: And Lisa, thank you.

Lisa Picardo: Thank you.