Combining old pensions

No. It is often cheaper, because old personal pensions from the eighties and nineties commonly charge over 1% a year while a modern workplace default fund is capped at 0.75% and frequently sits nearer 0.3%. But cost is only one of four things that matter. A pot with a guaranteed annuity rate attached is expensive for a reason, and the reason may be worth several times the fee. Leaving a scheme your employer is still paying into stops those contributions. The right unit of decision is one pot at a time, using that pot's own numbers.

Start with the government's free Pension Tracing Service at gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details. You give it the name of the employer or the provider and it returns current contact details, because the firm you paid into may have been bought or renamed since. Then write to each one with your dates of employment and your National Insurance number and ask for a current statement. Old payslips, P60s and letters about scheme changes are the best clues if you cannot remember who ran it. From 31 October 2026 every scheme must be connected to the pensions dashboards, which will eventually let you see the lot in one place. Until then, write to each provider.

It is a promise written into an older pension contract that, at a set age, your fund will convert into income at a fixed rate regardless of what rates are doing at the time. Nine per cent was not unusual on policies written before about 1990. On a £34,000 pot that means roughly £3,060 a year for life, and the current open market would have to beat that for giving it up to make sense. You would know by asking the provider one direct question in writing: does this policy carry any safeguarded or guaranteed benefits? Providers do not always volunteer it, so ask before you request a transfer value.

Usually you can. Your employer pays into that scheme while you are employed there and stops the moment you leave it. The minimum they must contribute is 3% of qualifying earnings and many pay considerably more, which is often larger than any charge saving you might make elsewhere. The default fund charge in a workplace scheme is capped at 0.75%. Some schemes do allow a partial transfer of the historic balance while contributions carry on into the same pot. That is a question for your scheme administrator, and their answer decides whether the option exists at all.

Not normally. The normal entitlement is 25% of each pot, capped across your lifetime by the lump sum allowance of £268,275, and that allowance applies to you across all your pensions. A minority of older schemes carry a protected entitlement above 25%, sometimes far above it, and that protection is attached to the policy. Transfer it individually and the protection is lost, leaving you with the standard 25%. It survives only on a block transfer, meaning two or more members moving together within set rules. Ask every provider whether it applies before you move anything.

No. Recommending that you move a specific pension to a specific place is regulated advice, and Buzz Financial Planning is not authorised to give it. What we do is the arithmetic around the decision: every pot in one projection, the charges modelled over the actual years remaining, the guarantee valued against the pot it sits in, and the whole thing run to 100 with UK tax applied. You make the decision with those numbers in front of you. Where it needs a recommendation we say so and can introduce you to Equity & General (FCA 474163), disclosing the commission beforehand.