What happens to your workplace pension if you change jobs?
A workplace pension does not follow you and does not disappear. It stays with the old scheme as a deferred pot in your name, remains invested, and can be left there indefinitely. The one exception is a very short period of membership, where opting out within the first month means contributions are refunded rather than preserved.
- The default: the pot stays with the old scheme, invested, in your name.
- The short-service case: opting out within a month of enrolment refunds contributions instead.
- Your duties: keep the provider's address current, or the statements stop arriving.
- The real risk: an accumulation of pots you have lost track of across a career.
01 What happens by default
Leaving an employer stops the contributions and nothing else. The pot remains invested in the same funds, the same charges apply, and it continues to grow or fall with markets. You can leave it there until you take it, transfer it later, or consolidate it — none of which has to be decided when you leave.
For a defined benefit scheme the entitlement becomes a deferred pension, revalued each year until you take it. That is a different mechanism with its own capped increases, and it is not a pot at all.
The exception is short service. Where you opt out within a month of being auto-enrolled, contributions are refunded and no pot exists. Beyond that period the money is yours and stays in the scheme.
Source: Joining a workplace pension
02 Charges can change when you leave
Some workplace schemes charge deferred members more than active ones, either because the employer subsidised the charge or because the scheme applies a different rate once contributions stop. The 0.75% cap on default funds applies to auto-enrolment schemes and does not cover every arrangement.
That is worth checking at the point of leaving rather than years later, because a difference of a few tenths of a per cent compounds over the decades a deferred pot sits there. It is also one of the few concrete arguments for consolidating rather than leaving pots where they are.
The other thing that changes is the default investment. Many schemes hold deferred members in a lifestyling strategy targeted at the scheme's own normal retirement age, which may be nothing like the age you now plan to retire.
Shows: what a difference in annual charges costs a deferred pot left untouched for a long period. Ignores: investment returns, inflation, transfer costs, and any guarantee attached to the old scheme.
On the defaults above, the worked example shows £4,015. Over 20 years the charge difference alone is worth £4,015 on this pot, before any difference in returns.
Source: Workplace pensions
03 Keeping track
The single most valuable action on leaving is to record the scheme name, the provider, the policy number and the date, and to keep the provider's address current. Pots go missing because people move house, not because schemes lose them.
Where a pot has already been lost, the Pension Tracing Service will find the scheme's current contact details from the employer's name, and the tracing process is straightforward if slow.
Consolidation is a separate question from tracking. Knowing where the pots are is always right; merging them is a decision with real considerations on both sides.
Source: Find pension contact details
Nothing happens to the pension when you leave, which is exactly the problem — nothing happening is easy to stop thinking about. Do two things on your last week. Write down the provider, the policy number and the scheme name somewhere you will find it in twenty years. And check whether the charge changes now that you are a deferred member, because some schemes are subsidised by the employer while you are there and not afterwards. Half a per cent over two decades on a £45,000 pot is real money for a ten-minute check.
FAQ
Do I lose my pension if I leave the job?
No. The pot stays with the scheme in your name, invested, and you can take it, transfer it or leave it there. The only exception is opting out within a month of being auto-enrolled, when contributions are refunded instead.
Do the charges stay the same?
Not always. Some schemes charge deferred members more than active ones, because the employer was subsidising the cost. It is worth checking at the point of leaving, since the difference compounds over the decades the pot may sit there.
Should I transfer it to my new employer's scheme?
Not automatically. Compare charges, fund choice and any guarantees attached to the old scheme first. Knowing where the pot is matters more than merging it, and consolidation is a separate decision with considerations on both sides.
Sources
Regulator references
- Joining a workplace pension · GOV.UK · 2025Eligibility, opt-out and re-enrolment rules.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- Workplace pensions · GOV.UK · 2025The statutory auto-enrolment framework and who it covers.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- Find pension contact details · GOV.UK · 2025The tracing service for pots the reader has lost track of.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.