State Pension Benefits

There are two types of State Pension:

• The basic State Pension which is available to men born before 6 April 1951 or women born before 6 April 1953; and
• The new State Pension which is available to men born on or after 6 April 1951 or women born on or after 6 April 1953.

You can claim your State Pension when you reach your State Pension age and the amount you will receive will depend on how long you have paid or been credited with National Insurance contributions.

Pension Protection Fund

The government set up the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) to help protect members of salary-related pension plans, should their employer become insolvent with insufficient funds in their pension plan to pay a prescribed level of benefits promised to members. For more information on the PPF, visit pensionprotectionfund.org.uk

Changing or winding up the Fund

In certain circumstances, the Trust Deed and Rules contain provisions for its amendment or wind up. If the Fund is wound up, the assets would be used to provide benefits to you in accordance with the priority order set out in legislation and the Trust Deed and Rules.

Trust Deed and Rules

Subject to the terms of the Fund closure to accrual on 31 March 2021, any benefits payable from the Fund in respect of your membership will be determined in accordance with the provisions of the Trust Deed and Rules. In the event of inconsistency between the Trust Deed and Rules (as read in conjunction with the relevant scheme closure documentation) and this guide, the provisions of the Trust Deed and Rules (as read in conjunction with the scheme closure documentation) will prevail.

Disputes

If you have a complaint about the Fund, the Administrator should be able to help you resolve it. If you’re not satisfied with the response you receive there is a formal complaints procedure in place for resolving disputes. This is a two-stage process. For details and the relevant form, you should email the Secretary to the Fund at NPF.post@nationwide.co.uk

A complainant who remains dissatisfied with the Trustee’s decision may refer the matter to The Pensions Ombudsman; relevant contact details are available on the Useful contacts page.

Divorce or dissolution of a Civil Partnership

Pension rights normally form part of your joint assets and are taken into account during any divorce or dissolution settlement. The options available to the Court in dealing with a pension are pension offsetting (where the value of your pension is offset against other assets), pension sharing (where a portion of your benefit is transferred to the ex-partner) and pension attachment orders (where you will have to agree to pay a portion of your future pension income to the ex-partner).

The Trustee has decided that any Transfer Value awarded to an ex-spouse, under the pension sharing option, will be transferred out of the Nationwide Pension Fund to an external pension provider of the ex-spouse’s choice. This is unless your ex-partner is a member of the Nationwide Pension Fund, in which case it can be transferred to them by increasing their Fund benefits.

Please note that information provided to you by the Administrator as part of a divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership may be subject to administration charges. These charges will be advised to you by the Administrator and the divorce or dissolution settlement will normally determine whose responsibility it is for paying the charges.

In the event of a divorce, you may want to consider updating your Expression of Wish form. This lets the Trustee know who you’d like to be considered to receive any eligible pension benefits in the event of your death. You can do this through the secure Member Portal.

Keeping in contact

We’ll write to you occasionally to ask you to check or update your contact details. It’s important for you to make sure your contact details are up to date, so we can send you important correspondence about your benefits.

We understand that if you receive a communication from us asking you to provide personal details, you may think this a scam. Remember, if you do receive a communication about the Fund by post, telephone or email, you can always contact the Administrator, using the contact details set out in this guide, to check if the communication is genuine.

Cyber Security and your Pension

The Fund Administrator has protections in place to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks. The Administrator continuously assesses its security measures and the Trustee take the security of your data seriously. If you have any questions about the security of your pension, you can contact the Fund Administrator.

Data protection

For more detailed information on how we use and disclose personal information, the protections we apply, the legal basis for our use of personal information and your data protection rights under the General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018, see our privacy notice.

Registered status

The Fund is a registered pension scheme with HMRC as defined under section 150 of the Finance Act 2004 and, as a result, the payment of contributions and the provision of benefits are subject to HMRC rules.

Trustee Report and Accounts and the Annual Review

An audited Report and Accounts is produced annually by the Trustee. An Annual Review, containing a summary of the Fund’s finances and a statement explaining the funding position, is also produced. Both are available on the Fund website, along with the Trustee Climate Risk Report and other published documents about how the Fund is invested.