Be Pension Wise, not pension scammed

Retirement planning is an important task that people often put off. Among the challenges of daily life it’s easy to avoid thinking ahead to retirement and pensions, as they can seem both distant and complicated.

The money guidance service MoneyHelper estimates that 22 million people feel they don't know enough to plan for their retirement. That’s almost a third of the UK’s population. This lack of awareness can lead to badly-informed decisions that have potentially devastating consequences for people in retirement.

Aside from the risk of missing out on benefits or facing unexpected tax charges on pension withdrawals, there’s a particular threat posed by scammers. Research has shown that pension savers lose millions of pounds each year to these criminals, who are using increasingly sophisticated approaches to convince people that they are legitimate in order to steal their money.

Scammers set out to deceive with professional-looking websites featuring testimonials from supposed past ‘customers’ and materials that are hard to distinguish from legitimate providers. Their goal is to convince savers to transfer some or all of their pensions into schemes that they control. They are known to offer to help savers to release cash from their pensions, often through services marketed as 'pension liberation', 'loans', 'loopholes', 'savings advances', 'one-off investments' or 'cashback', which are often backed by pressure-selling tactics.

If you are considering accessing your pension and are in any doubt at all about a promotion you’ve received, please do check and double check that it’s legitimate. Age UK has four good suggestions if you’re at all unsure:

1. Stay calm – if you get calls offering early access to your pension, don't feel rushed or pressured to respond.

2. Don't commit – Always seek advice before making decisions.

3. Stop the call – If you feel pressured or if the caller won't take no for an answer, end the conversation. Don't be embarrassed to hang up.

4. Listen to your doubts – If you think an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

If you’re unsure about how to access a pension you can make use of freely-available, impartial guidance from Pension Wise. Nine in ten users say they would recommend a face-to-face or telephone Pension Wise appointment and you can book using the details below.

The last government did little to improve take up of valuable support such as Pension Wise, and I’m hopeful that progress will be made in this parliament. With scammers known to be targeting pension savers it’s doubly important to seek out impartial support, to ensure that it’s you who benefits from your hard-earned savings and not them.

To find out more visit the MoneyHelper site at www.moneyhelper.org.uk or call the phoneline on 0800 011 3797.