Trace a lost pension

You may have already received a refund of your contributions depending on your length of service and the date you joined the scheme. Please read the information below:

If you had service ending before 1 April 1974

• Please contact your former employer to trace details of your pension as the Fund has limited information from this period.

If you had service between 1 April 1974 and 31 March 1988

• If you had less than five years' service - you should have received a refund of contributions paid upon leaving employment.
• If you had at least five years' service - you would have been entitled to pension benefits as a deferred award unless you transferred to another pension provider.

If you had service between 1 April 1988 and 31 March 2004

• If you had less than two years' service - you should have received a refund of contributions paid upon leaving employment.
• If you had at least two years' service - you would have been entitled to pension benefits as a deferred award unless you transferred to another pension provider.

If you had service between 1 April 2004 and 31 March 2014

• If you had less than three months' service - you should have received a refund of your pension contributions upon ceasing employment.
• If you had three or more months' service - your entitlement is to deferred benefits, unless you transferred this entitlement to another pension provider.

If you had service later than 1 April 2014

• For more information please visit Leaving your job before retirement.

You may have lost touch with your former pension schemes but, if you have, do not worry as the Pension Tracing Service can help. 

For more information, please visit Find pension contact details.

Once you have traced your pensions, keep your pension providers up to date with any change in your home address.

The Fund uses a variety of data cleansing services to support with tracing and checking the accuracy of the data held for our members. 

For our pensioner members, the Fund participates in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). This is a bi-annual exercise that matches electronic data within and between public and private sector bodies to prevent and detect fraud. These bodies include police authorities, local probation boards, fire and rescue authorities as well as local councils and a number of private sector bodies, the Fund participates with support from City of Wolverhampton Council. This is a service the Fund uses to support the identification of any unnotified deaths. In addition, the Fund undertakes an annual Life Certification Process for Overseas pensioners, where we write out to pensioner members who are based overseas to confirm existence and their contact information.

For deferred members, no longer in active employment with a Fund employer, the Fund is reliant on member notification of changes in address and contact information which enable the Fund to remain in dialogue.  Member self-service through the portal enables update of personal details but returned post and gaps in portal uptake indicate a higher risk of loss of member contact. To assist in the review and update of data held, the Fund has developed a deferred member tracing programme targeting checks on member contact information ahead of their anticipated retirement date, with the aim of reducing data queries and confirming contact at retirement.

The Fund work in partnership with Target, a third party organization to trace and verify their scheme members in the UK and overseas, helping to ensure pension scheme data is correct and up-to-date.

If you would like more information on Target, please feel free to engage via the telephone on +44 (0)1243 608 635 or via their webchat.