Many, many years ago (1989 in fact) I was 'pestered' into opting out of SERPS by Sun Life of Canada. What is the Contracted-out Pension Equivalent (COPE) amount? If you were contracted out but carried on working for a number of years after 2016, making full NI payments, you can build up further state pension until … SERPS (State Earnings Related Pension Scheme) mis-selling. If you contracted out after March 1997, you will have no SERPS entitlement in relation to earnings after that point. This means that you therefore could qualify to apply for contracted out of SERPS compensation with the support our team. In 1988, the Government allowed individuals, for the first time, to leave SERPS (known as ‘contracting-out’) and have part of their National Insurance Contributions paid into a personal pension plan instead. Individuals now have a good deal of choice concerning their pension strategy, However, if you contracted out before that, your entitlement will be reduced in line with the deduction. In the late 1980s the government encouraged workers to ‘contract out’ of S2P meaning the national insurance contributions (NICs) they paid were rebated back to their workplace pension. ). I have the vaguest of memories of opting out of SERPS back in the early 1990s. (Over 11 million people did just that! Broadly speaking, entire schemes were either contracted out or not contracted out, and my understanding is that the LGPS was ‘contracted out’ of the state earnings-related pension scheme (SERPS). I am thick when it comes to these sort of things and any reply may/will appear dumb. In 1988, people were given the option of opting out of SERPS and putting the money accrued either into a personal pension or the company final salary scheme. The State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS), originally known as the State Earnings Related Pension Supplement, was a UK Government pension arrangement, to which employees and employers contributed between 6 April 1978 and 5 April 2002, when it was replaced by the State Second Pension.. Employees who paid full Class 1 National insurance contribution between 1978 and 2002 earned a SERPS … INTRODUCTION The Social Security Act 1986 allowed a wider range of pension schemes to contract out of the state earnings-related pension scheme (SERPS)1. Check if you were contracted out. I have no recollection as to who persuaded me to do this and which company they were from. Those people who decided to opt out usually did so because they wanted the money to go directly to a personal pension rather than to buy NI. Under the current State Pension system people with sufficient NI qualifying years can get the basic State Pension and also build up entitlement to the additional State Pension (called S2P/previously called SERPS). The private hell of pensions: Of the six million who left Serps for the private pension train, more than 2.4 million were taken for a ride. This was usually just a matter of ticking a box and signing a form. OK. You can find out if you were contracted out by: checking your payslip. I have no paper work referring to this and at the time I was in no pension schemes. About SERPS (state Earnings Related Pension Scheme) If you were employed from the 80’s through to around 2012 you would have been eligible to ‘opt out’. Pensions Schemes after the 1989 Budget ANDREW DILNOT AND RICHARD DISNEY* I. checking with your employer.