Trustnet Magazine 63 June 2020 | Page 25

Your portfolio 24 / 25 “The recent crisis and subsequent sell-off in markets are likely to highlight any weaknesses in your investments” how much you have, where it is invested and whether it could work harder for you. There is rarely a ‘right time’ to carry out a financial springclean as people’s attitudes and behaviours change all the time,” he says. “But the recent crisis and subsequent sell-off in markets are likely to highlight any weaknesses in your investments.” Follow the money You can be your own detective by using the government’s Pension Tracing Service. If you want someone to carry out all the annoying paperwork for you, then look no further than some of the fintech apps taking on the creaking pensions industry. A pioneer of this digital approach is PensionBee, an app that takes a matter of minutes to set up. Chief executive Romi Savova says you just need to supply a small amount of information about an old pension such as the name of the provider or employer. “We then go off and do a lot of the hard work of getting your pensions together for you,” she explains. This is an issue that requires urgent attention. In 2018, the ONS estimated that around 13.6 million pension pots lay “dormant” and PensionBee believes this figure is growing exponentially larger, expecting it to hit 21.5 million this year. Even more shocking than the number of dormant pensions is their total value, with the Association of British Insurers (ABI) estimating this figure to be worth nearly £20bn. Savova believes the industry must shoulder much of the blame trustnet.com