For information on how now:pensions uses and protects your personal details, please read our privacy policy.

Your workplace has enrolled you into now:pensions. The member guide tells you all about how now:pensions works.  

It’s designed to help you understand:  

• why saving for retirement is important 
• how your savings build up 
• how we invest your money, and 
• the choices you have.

Download your guide to now:pensions. Please read it carefully and keep it somewhere safe, as it may be useful in the future. 

You don’t have to do anything. Your workplace will take your pension payments from your earnings and pay them to now:pensions.

If you want to pay extra money into your now:pensions account, here’s how you do it.

Log in to now:u. Go to Change your payments in and then Pay in more.

Choose an amount

Choose an extra amount to pay each time you get paid. This must be a percentage of your salary as a whole number – for example, 2%.  

If you want to reduce your payments in, reduce or remove the extra amount you pay.

Choose Confirm. Your workplace can tell you when the changed payments will start going in to your now:pensions account.

Your workplace must send your pension payments to us by the 22nd day of the month after they’ve taken the money out of your earnings.

Money is invested into now:pensions accounts every working day. So once your workplace has sent the payment to us, it will be invested in your now:pensions account in the following few days. You can use now:u to check when it’s in your account.

To look at your payment history, log in to now:u and go to Payments in.

You’ll see:

• the total amount paid in to date
• which payments are from you
• which payments are from your workplace, and
• the amount of each payment.

It automatically shows all the payments from the last 30 days. Choose Date range under Select dates to see earlier payments. You can also choose Tax year to see payments from a particular tax year.

Log in to now:u and choose Transactions. Then choose Charges.

You’ll see your charges as a table with the following headings.

• Date – when the charge was taken from your account.
• Transaction type – what the charge is for. There are two types.
  • Account charge – this covers the cost of running your pension, including maintaining your account and providing member services.
  • Investment charge – this is taken to cover the cost of managing your pension investments. Note: you won’t see any investment charges before 12 May because before this date your investment charges were taken by reducing the unit price on the funds that your money was invested in. Since 12 May we no longer do this and instead show you your investment charge separately. We’ve made this change so you can more clearly see the investment charges you pay.
• Amount – how much was taken from your account.

It automatically shows all charges from the last 30 days. Use Select dates to see charges from an earlier period.

Yes. You can appoint someone you trust to manage your now:pensions account on your behalf.   

It can be a family member, a friend, or a financial adviser. 

Read more about how to do this in our guide.

If you’ve been working for a while, you may have lost track of your pensions with previous employers, or don’t remember whether you had a pension with any of them. It’s worth checking to see whether you have any forgotten pensions you could add to your pension savings.

Find and combine your pensions with Pension Lab

It’s easy to find your lost pensions with now:pensions. We’ve partnered with Pension Lab, an external provider, to help you find your other pensions and bring them in to your now:pensions account.

To do this, you’ll have to agree to share your personal details with Pension Lab. You’ll then be able to use Pension Lab to search for pensions you’ve lost track of and don’t have information for. Put in any information you can remember about where you worked and the dates. Pension Lab will use this, along with your personal details, to search. 

Find out more about using Pension Lab to find other pensions.

Other ways to find lost pensions

If you don’t use Pension Lab you’ll need to do a bit more detective work to track down lost pensions. You can start by going through all the places you’ve worked and looking for statements and payslips showing pension contributions.  

You can contact the government Pension Tracing Service or the MoneyHelper service for free guidance on tracking down lost pensions. Both services are independent.

The National Pension Tracing Day website has lots of resources to help you start looking for lost pensions, including a video on how to use the government pension tracing service.   

How you do this depends on whether you’re currently paying in to your now:pensions savings, or not.

Paying in to your now:pensions savings?

You’ll need to ask your workplace to change your date of birth for you.

No longer working somewhere that uses now:pensions?

You’ll need to download and fill in a form, and send it to us.

Log in to now:u and go to your profile. Choose How do I change my personal details? From the drop-down, choose Download form.

Fill in the form and send it back to us. The form will tell you:

• where to send it, and
• if you need to send anything with it.

Once we’ve updated your date of birth, we’ll email you to say we’ve done this. And if you’ve sent us any documents, we’ll return them by recorded delivery within five working days.

You buy a policy from an insurance company that pays you a guaranteed income. The policy’s called an annuity. You can use some or all of your pension savings to buy your annuity.

Learn how to do this by reading our buying an annuity guide.

If you get divorced or dissolve a civil partnership, your pension savings must be treated as part of the divorce settlement. If your former partner has pension benefits, these must also be taken into account.

There are various ways to share your assets, including your pension savings, in a divorce. One way to share pension savings is a ‘pension sharing order’ which splits the savings between you and your former partner.

Please get in touch if you’re divorcing or dissolving a civil partnership, so we can send you the information you need.

Log in to now:u and go to Life events – Divorce where you can download a form.

Or, contact us.

We’re here to support you however we can. Visit our additional support page where you can find out who to contact, what our support processes are, and how to get answers to other questions you have.

Log in to now:u, and go to Get help. You’ll see Complaints and disputes below the help centre section. Choose Go to complaints and then Raise a new complaint.

You’ll be guided through the process of submitting a complaint to make sure we have enough information to investigate the problem for you. If you want to share supporting information you can upload up to five documents in pdf, docx, png, jpg, xlsx or csv formats. Each file can be up to 5MB.

Once you’ve submitted your complaint, we’ll email you an acknowledgment within the next two days.

From Complaints and disputes choose Go to complaints, then Current cases. You’ll see your complaint and the date you submitted it. Choose Withdraw complaint. You’ll see a summary of your complaint. You can give a reason for withdrawing the complaint, if you want to.

Once you choose Confirm withdrawal, you’ll go back to the Current cases page and see the complaint marked as Complaint withdrawn, with today’s date.

If you’re a member, or if you’re representing a member, you can do this once you’ve received an answer to your complaint.

Choose View and respond to see the answer to your complaint.

Go to the end of the answer and choose I disagree. You’ll go to a screen where you can give feedback. Once you’ve put in your feedback you can choose Close complaint if you want to. Or, to take your complaint further, choose Raise dispute.

You’ll see a box asking why you want to turn your complaint into a dispute. Put your reasons in here. If you need to add supporting information, you can upload up to five documents in pdf, docx, png, jpg, xlsx or csv formats. Each file can be up to 5MB.

Once you’ve finished giving your reasons and adding your supporting information, choose Submit dispute. You’ll see your complaint has been closed and a new dispute has been opened. We’ll email you an acknowledgment of your dispute within the next two days.

There are two stages of dispute. If you’re still unhappy after going through both stages, you’ll be given the option to refer your case to The Pensions Ombudsman.

If you’re representing an employer or payroll bureau, and you disagree with our findings and the outcome of our complaint investigation, you’ll have the option to refer your case to The Pensions Ombudsman.