360,000 incorrect State Pension forecasts issued
07 June 2019
According to PensionsAge, in a letter to Royal London director of policy, Steve Webb, Guy Opperman confirmed that around 360,000 online statements were inconsistent with earlier written statements that savers had received, with the more recent online statements being incorrect. In some cases, the amount people were forecasted to receive was inaccurate by more than £1,500 per year.
Commenting on the findings, Webb said:
“People are increasingly encouraged to use online services to help plan their retirement, and the new pensions dashboard will rely heavily on such data.
It is therefore very worrying that hundreds of thousands of people may have received incorrect state pension forecasts and in some cases will have taken decisions about their retirement plans on the basis of incorrect information.
Now that the government is aware of the scale of the problem, it must put an urgent stop to the issuing of incorrect statements.
Individuals need to have confidence that the information they receive from the government is accurate and should not have to live with the uncertainty that a statement they have already received may be seriously incorrect”.
Opperman reportedly added that he has asked officials to “explore options” to improve the accuracy of the information in national insurance records and how they can use that information to calculate the forecast.