Help me find my lost pension

Mrs P.M. writes: I retired in May 2015. While sorting through old documents, I came across a 1968 letter confirming the offer of a job with insurance broker Bain in Leeds. The letter says I would be required to join the company’s contributory pension scheme. I did so, and worked there until the end of 1974. I am now 68. I would be interested to know what happened to my pension contributions.

I HAVE to admire the detective work you carried out before you contacted me.

You have been in touch with the Pensions Regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority and a number of websites and firms you hoped might help. I did some digging too, and found that Bain became part of a company called Bain Dawes Limited.

It then changed its name to Bain Hogg, was acquired by yet another company, Inchcape, and was then sold to its current owner, Aon, in 1996.

Aon told me it had no trace of you in the pension records it held.

Of course, that led me – like you – to wonder what happened to your contributions. It has taken about eight months to come up with the answer, which was finally found in an old file held by the Department for Work & Pensions. The answer is that Bain paid the Government to buy you and other employees back into the state topup pension, rather than keeping you as members of its own pension fund.

This means you are already getting the benefit of those old contributions as part of your state pension.

I know the explanation is not what you hoped for, but I have to thank the Department for Work & Pensions and Aon for persevering in the hunt for paperwork going back more than 40 years.