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Workplace pensions

On this page you'll discover whether you can bring a complaint to us about your company, work-based, or occupational pension, and what will happen if you do.

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On this page

  1. What is a workplace pension?
  2. Can you complain about your workplace pension?
  3. How to complain about your workplace pension
  4. How to complain about your workplace pension
  5. Further information

Handling workplace pensions complaints?

See our guidance for advisers and pension firms on workplace pensions

What is a workplace pension?

All employers must organise pensions for employees to help them save for retirement. Sometimes workplace pensions are called ‘occupational’, ‘works’, ‘company’ or ‘work-based’ pensions.

There are several different types of workplace pension, including:

  • auto-enrolment pensions, where your employer signs you up to the pension without you having to do anything
  • stakeholder pensions made available through the workplace
  • group personal pensions (GPPs), set up by an employer with a pension provider to provide each employee with a pension 
  • small self-administered schemes (SSASs), set up by an employer for a small number of senior staff, and
  • executive pension plans (EPPs), set up by a company for the executive team

You'll find a full guide to the different types of workplace pensions on the Citizens Advice website

Can you complain about your workplace pension?

We may be able to help you if your complaint is about a financial adviser or pensions provider that’s regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). To find out if they are, check the Financial Services Register.

We can look at complaints about:

  • group personal pensions (GPPs)
  • executive pension plans (EPPs)
  • advice given to the trustee about regulated underlying investments in small self-administered schemes (SSASs)

You'll find more general information about:

The Pensions Ombudsman deals with some complaints about the administration of workplace pensions. If you're not sure, you can bring your complaint to us and, if we think it should be dealt with by the Pensions Ombudsman, we'll let you know. 

How to complain about your workplace pension

Our service is free and easy to use. 

  1. Before bringing your complaint to us, you should make a formal complaint to the company involved.
  2. If they don't send you a final response letter within eight weeks – or you're unhappy with their response – you can complain to an ombudsman.
  3. Our complaint checker will tell you more about some of the things we need to know upfront and help you make sure you’re ready to send us your complaint.
  4. Fill in our online complaint form. Your case will be assigned to a case handler who will get in touch when they start to investigate.
  5. To help us consider a complaint fairly, we may ask you to provide more information to help us understand what happened.

Use our complaint checker

How to complain about your workplace pension

We’ll make our decision about what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. To reach a decision, we'll also consider: 

  • the relevant law
  • any regulations that applied at the time
  • good industry practice and relevant regulatory guidance

We'll tell you whether we believe you've been treated unfairly or not. If we don't uphold your complaint, we'll tell you why and explain how we reached our decision.

  • In cases about the administration of a group personal pension arrangement or an executive pension plan, we’ll look at how the mistake affected you.

    For example, if the pensions provider unnecessarily delayed applying your contributions, we might ask them to recalculate and reconstruct the value of your policy. That may mean they have to apply extra units to a plan.

    If documents have been sent to a wrong address, or original documents have gone missing, we might tell them to pay you for the distress or inconvenience this caused you. Or we’ll say they should cover the cost of replacing the originals.

  • We might decide that the investments advice you got was unsuitable, or that you were wrongly advised to transfer to a small self-administered scheme or executive pension plan. 

    If so, we’ll likely tell the pension provider to put things right, for example, by paying compensation into your pension plan or straight to you. 

If we think you've lost money – or may lose retirement income – because you received the wrong pensions advice, we'll tell the financial adviser or pensions provider to put things right.

We may also tell them to pay you compensation for any distress or inconvenience you have suffered.

What to expect

Further information

MoneyHelper offer a series of online guides on pensions and retirement

You'll also find more information about workplace pensions and planning retirement on Gov.uk