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Join Which? MoneyPension Wise guidance goes digital - 5 ways to prepare for retirement
Check your retirement savings are on track during pensions awareness week
The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) has launched Pension Wise Digital – an online system to supplement its existing telephone and face-to-face guidance appointments.
Pension Wise Digital offers an alternative way to obtain guidance and support from pension experts and has launched during pension awareness week.
The digital service includes access to webchat, manned by MoneyHelper’s pensions specialists, ensuring customers receive guidance that is relevant to their circumstances.
Here, Which? explains how the new service works and the five things you should think about this week to help you plan for your retirement.
How does the new service work?
Digital appointments can be accessed at any time via the MoneyHelper website.
As with the current eligibility criteria for a Pension Wise appointment, Pension Wise Digital can be accessed by anyone over 50 with a defined contribution pension.
The new development is aimed at those who can’t commit to an appointment during working hours. It allows progress to be saved and returned to when convenient for the customer.
Users answer some questions about their retirement planning, which guides them towards content on the options for taking their pension(s).
Initial questions look at pension basics, income and savings, debt and repayments, and health and family. Guidance covers annuities, pension drawdown, taking money out in lump sums and full encashment of pension pots.
Retiring later or delaying access to pensions is also considered. Based on their answers, participants receive a personalised to-do list of the next steps.
5 ways to prepare for retirement
The launch of the new service coincides with the annual pensions awareness week.
You might not be ready to have a full pension review, or you may not yet be 50, but there are some things you can do this week to keep your retirement savings on track.
1. Engage with your pensions
It may sound fairly obvious, but taking some time to make sure that your pension affairs are in order is a useful exercise.
Check that the details your pension provider(s) hold about you are correct by logging into your online account or checking your latest paper statement.
If you have moved jobs or are about to do so, remember to keep your previous pension’s details to hand and occasionally log on to your account to ensure you don’t lose track of that part of your retirement fund.
2. Consider your contribution levels
While it may not always be possible to increase your pension contributions, if you can do so, it will bring considerable benefits.
Increasing your pension contribution can put you on track for a better retirement lifestyle or allow you to retire sooner.
If you're in a defined contribution workplace pension, there's a minimum contribution requirement of 8%. This is made up of 5% from you (including 1% pension tax relief) and 3% from your employer.
Higher contributions mean extra money from the government. Thanks to pension tax relief, when you pay into a pension money you would have paid in tax on your earnings goes towards your retirement savings instead.
- Find out more: income tax on pensions
3. Nominate a beneficiary
What happens to your pension savings when you’re gone may not be a priority for you. However, it’s important to consider.
Make sure you've completed a nomination of beneficiary form indicating who should get your pension when you die. This is important because defined contribution pensions are not part of your estate, so aren't covered by your will.
Nominating a beneficiary is pretty straightforward. Most of the time, you can do it online without any fuss.
You can ask your pension provider to pay the money to a particular person. The pension provider isn’t legally bound by your request, but they will take it into account when sorting out your pension. Beneficiaries can be altered at any time.
You should check with your pension provider whether you have a nominated beneficiary in place.
4. Get a state pension forecast
The state pension will provide extra income for you in retirement. The current state pension age (when you start receiving the payment) is 66, but this will rise again to 67 by 2028.
Payments are set to rise by 4% for 2025-26, taking the full level of new state pension to around £11,962 a year.
The exact amount you get will depend on your National Insurance record. You need 35 years' worth of National Insurance contributions (NICs) to get the full state pension and 10 years to get anything at all.
You can get a state pension forecast to see if you are on track to receive a full state pension. It will also reveal if there are any gaps you might be able to top up. For instance, if you have been looking after children, you’ll be able to apply for national insurance credits to cover these years.
5. Trace lost pots
It's easy to lose track of your pensions as you change from job to job.
The Pensions Policy Institute estimates that three million pension pots amounting to nearly £27 billion in savings have become separated from their owners.
The government's free Pension Tracing Service has a register of all workplace schemes. This will give you the name and contact details of the provider of an employer's scheme so you can contact them directly.
Aviva’s has a ‘Find and Combine’ service which can locate lost pensions for you using artificial intelligence to speed up the process. To get started you’ll need to apply online on the Aviva website with as much information about where you’ve worked and any pensions you may have.
The Association of British Insurers gives you steps you can follow to find the relevant contact details for the provider now responsible for your policy.
