When planning for retirement, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what your pension benefits are and to ensure that all your service details are correctly recorded. If you’ve missing service, this can impact your pension benefits and any errors/missing service found during the application process could delay your retirement benefits being paid. In this blog, we’ll discuss what to do if you’ve missing service and the steps you can take to stay on top of your pension benefits.

What’s missing service?

Missing service is when you’ve made contributions to your teacher’s pension, but these contributions are not reflected in your Benefit Statement or service history. This is usually caused by inaccurate record details. Missing service can lead to gaps in your service record, which can affect the calculation of your retirement benefits, resulting in delays to your retirement benefits being paid.

What should I do if I have missing service?

If you’ve identified missing service on your records, here’s what you need to do. You’ll need to reach out to the relevant employer responsible for the period you’ve got missing service and ask them to update your record accordingly. This’ll then be reflected on your Benefit Statement and service history.

If you’re wondering what to do when you’ve missing service, but your employer doesn’t hold your records or no longer exists, please read our FAQs for more guidance.

View your Benefit Statement and service history

To keep on top of your pension benefits and to ensure you’re on track for retirement, view your Benefit Statement and service history. You can access this information any time via My Pension Online. Your Statement gets updated each month, if you’re an active member, so regularly checking this will help identify any missing service. The earlier you find any errors the simpler it is to correct them, making the retirement process smoother, however far in the future it may be.