Legal & General Pension Tracing and Consolidation Services Terms & Conditions

The Legal & General Pension Tracing Service and Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service are not pensions, financial, regulatory, legal, tax or other investment advice or recommendations. Nothing on our website or in any communications from us should be construed as pensions, financial, regulatory, legal, tax or investment advice. You must make your own investment decisions as to whether to make any pension transfers. Any advice received from third-party advisers is obtained by you independently of the Legal & General Pension Tracing Service and Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service and will not form part of the agreement between you and Your Legal & General Pension Provider.

The value of your pension pot isn’t guaranteed. The value of your pension savings can go down as well as up. Your pension savings will be invested in one or more investment funds. The law, tax rates and any allowances may change in the future. These changes could affect the value of your savings, how much you can pay in, or the age at which you’re able to access your money. How tax works for you will depend on your individual circumstances.

Introduction
1. The Services are offered on the basis of these Terms. Please read these Terms carefully before you proceed to use any of the Services.
2. When you open an Account, you will be asked to accept these Terms. Once you accept these Terms, you and we agree to comply with these Terms to the extent they apply to your use of the Services. If you do not agree with any of these Terms, you should not open an Account or use any of the Services.
3. In addition to these Terms, our Privacy Policy explains how we may use and share your information.
4. You should also read the relevant scheme documentation for Your Legal & General Pension Scheme before using the Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service.
Definitions
1. In these Terms, the following capitalised terms have the following meanings:
  1. Account: your online account set up through the Website by entering your name and email address. When you set up your Account, you will receive a login giving you online access to your Account. Through your Account, you can track the progress of the Legal & General Pension Tracing Service, check the status of any pending transfers being made as part of the Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service, and perform other administrative actions.
  2. FSCS: the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, implementing the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) rules for compensation payments upon a failure of certain regulated financial service businesses.
  3. Ineligible Pension: where:
    
    (a) the pension is a defined benefit pension scheme (also known as ‘final salary’) and over £30,000; or
    (b) the pension is in Income Drawdown or Flexi-Access Drawdown, which is where you have already taken tax-free cash from your pension and left the rest of the money invested for you to take as regular and/or occasional income; and
    (c) where any pension includes the following special features:
    
    (i) Defined Benefits;
    (ii) Guaranteed Annuity Rates (GAR);
    (iii) Guaranteed Minimum Pensions (GMP);
    (iv) With Profits (and other investment guarantees);
    (v) Protected Pension Age;
    (vi) Protected/Enhanced Tax-Free Cash;
    (vii) Life Cover/Dependent Benefits;
    (viii) International pensions;
    (ix) Exit fees that are over £10;
    (x) Active Pensions; or
    (xi) the pension contains any other safeguarded benefits, in the form of some guarantee or promise about the rate of secure pension income that you or your beneficiaries will receive or have an option to receive.
  4. Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service: the service provided by Your Legal & General Pension Provider that combines your existing pension(s) into Your Legal & General Pension Scheme once you give us permission to do so.
  5. Legal & General Pension Tracing Service: the service provided by Your Legal & General Pension Provider that helps you locate your existing pension(s) to enable you to proceed with the Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service if you wish to do so.
  6. The Services: all of the services offered by Your Legal & General Pension Provider via the Website, including:
    
    (a) the provision of your Account;
    (b) the Legal & General Pension Tracing Service; and
    (c) the Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service.
  7. Terms: these terms and conditions, as amended from time to time in accordance with Section 11.
  8. Website: https://www.myfuturenow.co.uk
  9. Your Legal & General Pension Provider: is defined in Section 3 below.
  10. Your Legal & General Pension Scheme: your existing Legal & General workplace pension scheme which is offered by Your Legal & General Pension Provider.
The parties
1. You: you must be aged 18 or over and live in the United Kingdom to use any of the Services. You will be treated as a “Retail” customer under the FCA rules, which means you benefit from the highest level of investor protections under those rules.
2. Your Legal & General Pension Provider: the provider of Your Legal & General Pension Scheme, which will either be Legal & General (Portfolio Management Services) Limited, a company incorporated and registered in England, registered office at One Coleman Street, London EC2R 5AA (Company Registration No. 02457525), which is authorised and regulated by the FCA (reference number: 146786); or Legal & General Assurance Society Limited, a company incorporated and registered in England, registered office at One Coleman Street, London EC2R 5AA (Company Registration No. 00166055), which is authorised and regulated by the Prudential Regulatory Authority and the FCA (reference number: 117659). In these Terms, “ we ”, “ our ” and “ us ” will be taken to mean Your Legal & General Pension Provider, including any persons acting on behalf of Your Legal & General Pension Provider such as its employees and third party service providers. You can identify who is Your Legal & General Pension Provider by checking the separate terms and conditions applicable to Your Legal & General Pension Scheme.
The Services
1. For your own benefit and protection, you should consider whether seeking specialist advice from a financial advisor would be appropriate for you in determining whether to use any of the Services.
2. The Account
  1. Opening an Account on the Website is free. You can opt out of using the Services and can terminate the Account at any time.
  2. Your Account is opened from the moment you input information about yourself (e.g. your email address) on the Website.
  3. By opening an Account, you agree to us contacting you for the purposes of giving you reminders, updates, information requests, requests for actions to assist us in locating and consolidating your existing pensions, and general correspondence regarding your progress through the tracing and consolidation process, including reminders to input information we may need to provide the Services.
  4. However, initiating the Account opening process does not necessarily mean that you will be able to transfer any pensions or be able to use any of the other Services.
  5. When you open an Account, we will undertake various checks to protect both you and ourselves from fraudulent activity and to comply with regulatory requirements. We can only proceed to offer you any further Services once our internal procedures are completed. These checks may include verifying your identity with an external provider, including credit reference agencies (please note that these checks will not affect your credit score), the Electoral Register or information from utility groups (e.g. electricity providers). By opening an Account you agree to allow us to perform these. Following checks, we may let you know that we are unable to offer you any one or more of the other Services, if the outcome of the checks mean that we would not be able to offer such Services in a way which complies with our regulatory obligations.
  6. Your Account will be automatically closed and you will no longer have access to your account 6 months after: (a) all existing pensions that are located as part of the Legal & General Pension Tracing Service have been successfully transferred across to Your Legal & General Pension Scheme, or (b) we notify you that we cannot transfer existing pensions that are located as part of the Legal & General Pension Tracing Service to Your Legal & General Pension Scheme because they are Ineligible Pensions.
3. The Legal & General Pension Tracing Service
  1. We will use the information you provide us to locate your existing pension(s) on your behalf. We may ask you to provide information about yourself, including information about your existing pension(s) and your employment history. We will also ask for your authorisation to approach the provider(s) of your existing pension(s) (either in writing or verbally) on your behalf in order to obtain relevant information from them. By asking us to locate your pension(s) and agreeing to use the Legal & General Pension Tracing Service to do so you agree to allow us to use this information (including your personal data and any approved form of your signature you provide us) to identify you to your existing pension provider(s) upon their request and to find your existing pension savings by contacting government departments, your existing pension provider(s), your current and/or past employer(s) and any other person or organisation we believe may help us to locate your pension(s). To locate your pension(s), we will need to use a standard letter of authority which confirms to your existing pension provider(s) that you have given us permission to request information from them on your behalf. We may need to include an electronic or physical (wet ink) copy of your signature on the standard letter of authority, or send you the standard letter of authority by post for signature.
  2. We take the security of your information very seriously. See further details of our security processes for information you provide to us in our Privacy Policy and in Section 6 of these Terms.
  3. We cannot promise that we will be able to locate any or all of your pensions.
  4. While we will always take reasonable measures to ensure the accuracy of the information we provide you, we are unable to guarantee the accuracy of information from third parties provided in relation to your existing pension(s). We do not accept responsibility if any third party provides us with inaccurate information about your pension(s) or any resulting mistakes or inaccuracies.
  5. You are welcome to contact us with clarification questions. To comply with regulatory requirements binding upon us, in responding to any questions you address to us we shall restrict our answer to statements of identified facts provided to us. We are not able to advise you on the significance or impact of those facts on your investment or pension decisions or whether you should proceed with any of the Services. We may also point you towards additional sources of information. If you would like advice on your pensions, financial, regulatory, legal, tax or other investment advice or recommendations, please contact an independent financial adviser.
4. The Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service
  1. If you have elected to transfer one or more eligible pension(s) and have agreed to use the Legal & General Pension Consolidation Service, we will contact the provider(s) holding your existing pension(s) on your behalf and advise them that you wish to transfer your pension(s) to Your Legal & General Pension Scheme.
  2. If we do not get a response from an existing pension provider within a reasonable period of time, we will contact them again. However, please note that we cannot require any of your existing pension providers to respond to us. Where information is not received from an existing provider, it will delay any investment of your monies into Your Legal & General Pension Scheme. We shall not be responsible for any delay in transferring your existing pension(s), or in investing any cash received from one of your existing pensions, where such delay is caused by any third party provider failing to transfer your existing pensions savings to us (either at all or within a reasonable time of our request) or providing us with necessary information to process the transfer.
  3. All transfers from your existing pension plan(s) will be made as cash and in British pounds sterling.
  4. Before Your Legal & General Pension Provider can transfer your existing pension(s) you may need to provide us with additional information and, in some instances, seek specialist advice such as may be provided by an independent financial adviser on the transfer of such pensions. We will notify you if so. Please note that we do not provide advisory services. Any additional third party advice you require is likely to charge you fees for that advisory service.
  5. You are responsible for being aware of and bearing all exit fees associated with your existing pensions. Most providers don’t charge exit fees. When you use the Legal & General Pension Tracing Service we will let you know if we find that any of your existing pension(s) have exit fees greater than £10. If we do, we will get in touch and ask you to make a decision about whether you want to transfer that pension to Your Legal & General Pension Scheme.
  6. You are also responsible for being aware of and bearing all consequences of transferring any pensions that are defined benefits or have guaranteed annuity rates or other non-standard features.
  7. If it is an Ineligible Pension or if we experience any of the following issues we may not be able to transfer that pension to Your Legal & General Pension Scheme:
    
    (a) we have been unable to locate the pension;
    
    (b) we have been able to locate your pension but unable to obtain sufficient details from the provider;
    
    (c) the pension has other types of special features which Your Legal & General Pension Provider advises you of in writing from time to time.
  8. We will check for these features prior to transfer and let you know if any are found.
5. Cancelling a Pension Transfer
  1. A cancellation notice will be issued to you when we confirm your transfer has been set up. To cancel any transfer the notice must be completed and sent it to us. Such notice will cover where we have already received the transferred funds into your Legal & General Pension Scheme, in which case it will be managed in accordance with the remainder of this Clause 4.5.
  2. You will also be able to cancel any transfer via email or the telephone using the L&G Workplace Helpline on 0345 070 8686. We will also accept a photo or scanned copy of the signed cancellation notice if it is emailed to us.
  3. Where a transfer has not been completed, no cancellation will be issued to you and further action shall be undertaken by us.
  4. Each time you transfer pension savings into your Legal & General Pension Scheme, You will have 30 days from the date of us allocating each transfer payment to cancel and ask us to return this transfer payment to your old provider. This money cannot be returned directly to you. The amount that we’ll return will reflect any fall in the value of the investment fund or funds that your pension pot was invested in. When we return any money to a previous pension plan we’ll also return any charges that have been taken.
  5. Please note that we can only cancel a pension transfer if your old provider is willing to take back any funds which have already been transferred to us. If they are not, your transfer value must remain in Your Legal & General Pension Scheme unless you instruct us to transfer it to another pension plan or you choose to take benefits from it. Please note that you can only take your benefits if you are aged 55 or over. Once we have processed your cancellation request (except if the old provider is unwilling to take back any funds which have already been transferred to us), we return the relevant funds to your old provider, minus any investment loss since the transfer date.
Monitoring your Account and communicating with us
1. We will deliver most of our communications with you over the Internet, including via email. Our email messages may contain personal information about you and your pensions, so you should ensure that your email address is always correct and up to date. We may also telephone you in connection with the Services where appropriate.
2. You will be sent a confirmation email when you set up an Account. If any details are wrong, or if you receive a confirmation notice you do not recognise, please contact us immediately.
3. We make every effort to ensure that access to your Account remains available to you whilst it remains open, but cannot guarantee that access to your Account will be available at all times or without delay.
4. If you would like to get in touch, you can call us on the telephone number listed on the Website or email us on the email address listed on the Website.
5. If you would like to write to us by post, please address your letters to: Pension Consolidation Team, Po Box 809, Cardiff, CF24 0YL, United Kingdom
How we protect your information and privacy
1. Your Legal & General Pension Provider complies with and is registered as a data controller under UK data protection laws. We take all reasonable care to prevent any unauthorised access to your personal data. We take the protection of your information very seriously and how we may use and share your information is documented in our Privacy Policy .
2. We may obtain information (including personal data) from you, your employer(s) (current and/or previous), your existing pension provider(s) and other third parties at various times during the provision of the Services. Any information you provide may be used to update an existing record we hold with respect to you.
3. It is your responsibility to ensure that the contact details we have for you are correct and up-to-date. If you change your contact details in the future, please tell us as promptly as possible.
4. We may also need to seek additional information from you in order to provide the Services.
Your Password and Account details
1. We will rely on any communication which we reasonably believe to have been made by you (or on your behalf) using your Account. We will treat instructions validated with your passwords as genuine.
2. We recommend that you change your Account password regularly to keep your details as secure as possible. In addition we strongly suggest that you do not use the same password for any other online accounts you hold.
3. You must not disclose your Account username, password or other secure information to anyone else. We may block online access to your Account for security reasons if we suspect that the security of your Account has been compromised. Where we believe the integrity of our systems could be compromised by you providing your Account username, password or other secure information details to a third party, we may block online access to your Account and take such other reasonable action as may be necessary to protect us or you.
4. You must report any information loss, suspected theft or misuse of your Account to us as soon as possible.
5. By initiating the process to establish an Account or using any of the Services, you agree to our monitoring and recording any or all of our interactions with you (including telephone conversations) for the purposes of improving the Services and meeting any of our regulatory requirements.
Our fees
1. Using the Services is completely free of charge. However, Your Legal & General Pension Provider will apply charges in respect of all of the assets in Your Legal & General Pension Scheme, including those which are transferred from another pension. These charges will be provided on the Website for you to review before you choose to make a transfer and will be contained in the “scheme documentation” you were given when you first joined the scheme.
2. Please note that all investments include transaction costs related to the buying and selling of underlying securities (such as shares) in your pensions. These include costs such as stamp duty reserve tax and levies charged by regulatory and tax authorities. These are not fees earned by Your Legal & General Pension Provider. Normally these transaction costs aren’t separately disclosed and their effect is to reduce the performance (or growth) of your pension. Transaction costs are covered in your existing scheme documentation.
Taxes
1. You, and not Your Legal & General Pension Provider, will remain responsible for the management of your tax affairs in relation to any pension you hold, including any tax reporting requirements.
2. There are currently statutory annual and lifetime caps on the amount of tax deductible contributions you are permitted to make to your pensions. We will not, as part of the Services, monitor or report to you in relation to your annual and lifetime caps or whether you have exceeded such caps by making any pension transfer. You are responsible for ensuring that you adhere to the statutory annual and lifetime caps with respect to all of your pensions. If you fail to do so and this results in Your Legal & General Pension Provider suffering any net costs, you agree to compensate Your Legal & General Pension Provider for such costs.
Closing your Account
1. You may cancel your Account at any time by giving us written notice, or via phone or email. In addition, you may terminate these Terms with immediate effect by giving written notice that you wish to close your Account.
2. Please note that any such termination shall not affect the completion of any pension transfers that have already been initiated as part of the Services. You may be able to cancel such transfers in accordance with Section 4.5.
3. Once your Account has been closed, you will no longer be able to access any documents saved in your Account or access any of the other Services. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have downloaded and saved all documents that you require whether for regulatory, taxation or other purposes. The Services do not include the retention or delivery of any documentation or records to you after your Account has been closed.
Changes to these terms
1. We may change these Terms from time to time. We will give you reasonable advance notice before any such changes become effective. However, if we are required to make any changes to these Terms for legal or regulatory reasons, such changes may have immediate effect or at short notice if required by relevant law or regulation. We will notify you of updates to these Terms by making the updated version of these Terms available on the Website, and also by email in the event that changes to these Terms are material. You may terminate these Terms and close your Account in accordance with Section 10 if you do not want the updated Terms to apply to you. If you terminate these Terms but do not cancel any transfer which has been started (or you are unable to cancel such transfer in accordance with section 4.5), the existing Terms will apply except where any update is needed for regulatory compliance reasons.
Conflicts of interest
1. We are determined to treat our customers fairly at all times. We have a policy in place to ensure that we identify and handle conflicts fairly and treat our customers with honesty and integrity at all times.
Complaints
1. You should contact us if you are dissatisfied with any aspect of the Services.
  
  Telephone: 0345 076 0084
  Email: [email protected]
  Write: Pension Consolidation Team, Po Box 809, Cardiff, CF24 0YL, United Kingdom
2. Your complaint will be handled in accordance with the FCA rules. We treat every complaint very seriously and aim to resolve each complaint fairly and promptly.
3. We hope to resolve all complaints amicably. However, should we fail to resolve a complaint to your satisfaction or if we fail to do so within eight (8) weeks of receiving your complaint, you can also direct your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service :
  
  Phone: 0800 023 4567 or 0300 123 9123
  Email: [email protected]
  Write: Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, London E14 9SR
4. Please also note that complaints may be submitted for online resolution to the Online Dispute Resolution platform.
Financial Services Compensation Scheme
1. The FSCS is the UK’s compensation fund of last resort for customers of authorised financial services firms; see further www.fscs.org.uk . The FSCS covers business conducted by firms authorised by the FCA and the PRA, the independent watchdogs set up by government to regulate financial services in the UK and protect the rights of consumers. FSCS’s protection is governed by the PRA and the FCA’s rules. The PRA’s rules cover claims in relation to deposits as well as life and general insurance policies and are set out in the Depositor Protection and Policyholder Protection sections of the PRA Rulebook.
2. Your Legal & General Pension Provider is a FCA regulated entity and accordingly you are covered for claims in relation to the Services of up to £85,000 should we become insolvent. Please note that this cover for claims in relation to the Services is separate to any FSCS cover that may be available to you for claims in relation your L&G Pension Scheme should your Legal & General Pension Provider become insolvent. You can find more information on that cover in Your L&G Pension Scheme documentation.
Other legal matters
1. Your Legal & General Pension Provider may appoint another group company to assist in the provision of the Services or to perform any or all of our functions or responsibilities under these Terms. This will not affect your rights under these Terms and Your Legal & General Pension Provider will remain responsible for providing the Services to you.
2. If our provision of the Services is delayed by an event outside our control then we will contact you as soon as possible to let you know and we will take steps to minimise the effect of the delay. Provided we do this, we will not be liable for delays caused by the event. You may also terminate these Terms in accordance with Section 10 if you are affected by such delay.
3. We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so.
4. These terms are governed by English law and you can bring legal proceedings in respect of the Services in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland you can also bring legal proceedings in respect of the Services in the Scottish courts. If you live in Northern Ireland you can also bring legal proceedings in respect of the Services in the Northern Irish courts.
5. We will communicate with each other exclusively in English.