How do you protect yourself from financial scams as you get older?
Pension scams work by producing urgency and an unusual opportunity, and the defences are boring and effective: check the FCA register, refuse to be hurried, and treat any unexpected approach about a pension as a scam until it is proved otherwise. Cold calling about pensions is illegal, so the call itself is the evidence.
- The illegal signal: unsolicited calls, texts and emails about pensions are banned outright.
- The check: the FCA register, using contact details you found yourself rather than ones you were given.
- The pattern: urgency, an unusual investment, a free review, and a promise of unusual returns.
- The pause: scheme trustees can and do refer transfers for guidance where warning signs appear.
01 The approach is the evidence
Cold calling about pensions is illegal, along with unsolicited texts and emails. That is unusually useful, because it means a legitimate firm will not contact you out of the blue about your pension — so the contact itself tells you what it is.
The follow-up is always urgency: a time-limited opportunity, a deadline, a rate that will not last. Urgency exists to stop you checking, and it is the most reliable indicator across every variant of the scam.
The offer of a free pension review is the standard opening. Genuine free guidance exists and is provided by Pension Wise, the government-backed service — not by a firm that telephoned you.
Source: FCA on pension scams
02 How to check
Look the firm up on the FCA register using contact details you found yourself. Scammers routinely clone authorised firms, using a real firm's name and registration number with their own phone number and website, so calling the number they gave you proves nothing.
Check the scheme too. The Pensions Regulator publishes warnings about specific arrangements, and a scheme that is genuinely registered will not object to being checked.
And take the free Pension Wise appointment if you are over 50. It is an hour with a government-backed guidance specialist, it is free, and it is the cheapest second opinion available on any pension decision.
03 The structural defences
Scheme trustees have a duty to check for warning signs before making a transfer, and can require you to take guidance where certain flags appear. That process feels like an obstruction and it exists because it works.
Consolidating pensions into fewer accounts makes the position easier to monitor, and the checks that consolidation needs are the same ones that surface an unusual arrangement.
The strongest protection is procedural rather than analytical: a rule that you never act on a financial approach you did not initiate, and never on the same day. Almost no legitimate opportunity is lost by waiting a week; almost every scam is.
Shows: what a transferred pension would have become, to put the loss from a scam in context. Ignores: any partial recovery, and the fact that recovery from a pension scam is usually impossible.
On the defaults above, the worked example shows £187,104. A pension lost to a scam is almost never recovered, and the loss is not the transfer value but what it would have become — £187,104 here.
Source: FCA consumer information
The single most useful fact about pension scams is that cold calling about pensions is illegal. That means an unexpected call, text or email about your pension is not an opportunity to evaluate — it is evidence of what you are dealing with, and the correct response is to hang up. Beyond that, one rule covers almost everything: never act on a financial approach you did not initiate, and never on the same day. And if you are over 50, book the Pension Wise appointment. It is free, it takes an hour, and it is the best second opinion in the country.
FAQ
Is it illegal to be cold called about a pension?
Yes. Unsolicited calls, texts and emails about pensions are banned, so a legitimate firm will not contact you out of the blue. The approach itself is the warning sign rather than something to be evaluated on its merits.
How do I check a firm is genuine?
Look it up on the FCA register using contact details you found independently. Cloned firms use a real firm's name and registration number with their own phone number, so the details they give you prove nothing.
What is Pension Wise?
A free government-backed guidance appointment available from age 50, covering your options for accessing a defined contribution pension. It is genuine free guidance, unlike a free pension review offered by a firm that contacted you.
Sources
Regulator references
- FCA on pension scams · Financial Conduct Authority · 2025The warning signs and the register check this post tells the reader to run.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- The Pensions Regulator on pension scams · The Pensions Regulator · 2025The regulator's scam guidance for scheme members.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- FCA consumer information · Financial Conduct Authority · 2025The regulator's own consumer guidance on the products discussed here.Last verified: 2026-09-07
Calculator unit tests · the assertions this page's worked example is checked against, and their last result
Changelog
- 2026-09-07 — initial publish (new format)
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Jordan Reeves
Founder of Talk Through Wealth. A software engineer for over a decade before turning to retirement planning, Jordan built the projection engine after watching family members get fragmented, country-by-country advice that never reconciled. He writes about retirement the way the engine computes it: month-by-month, lifetime-long, and skeptical of any rule of thumb that hasn't been run through the math.