How many pension pots does the average broadcast freelancer end up with?

If you've spent a career working in broadcast and production, the chances are your pension situation looks nothing like someone who spent thirty years at the same company.

It probably looks more like this: a handful of pension statements arriving at different times of year, from providers you half-remember joining during a long contract several years ago. A couple of schemes you're not entirely sure are still active. Possibly one or two you've lost track of entirely - set up during a production that wrapped years ago and never thought about since.

This is not unusual. It's actually the norm for experienced freelancers in this industry.

Why broadcast freelancers end up with so many pension pots

The structure of a career in broadcast and production tends to produce pension fragmentation almost automatically.

Auto-enrolment legislation means that any employer paying you above the earnings threshold is required to enrol you into a workplace pension scheme. For someone moving between productions, that can mean a new pension pot starting up every time a contract begins with a new employer - particularly if that employer uses a different pension provider.

A drama series editor who has worked across ten or fifteen long-running productions over a twenty-year career might have contributions sitting in ten or fifteen separate places. A production manager who has moved between independent production companies, broadcasters, and post-production houses over a similar period could find themselves in a similar position.

Add to that any pensions set up personally - a SIPP opened during a quieter year, a stakeholder pension from the early 2000s when advice at the time suggested having one - and the total number of separate pots can reach double figures without anyone having made a deliberate decision to accumulate them.

What typically happens to those pots

In many cases, nothing happens to them. They sit with their respective providers, continuing to be invested according to whatever default investment strategy was in place when the pot was opened, receiving no further contributions and attracting no particular attention.

This isn't necessarily a problem in itself. Pensions don't expire and they don't disappear simply because contributions have stopped. But pots that aren't being actively monitored can drift - into investment strategies that no longer suit, into charges that erode value quietly over time, or simply into obscurity as contact details change and statements go to old addresses.

The more practical problem is that a collection of separate, unconnected pots makes it very difficult to understand what you actually have. Knowing that you have a pension with Provider A worth roughly £40,000 and a pension with Provider B worth roughly £25,000 and a couple of others you haven't checked recently is not the same as understanding your pension position. It's a list of fragments. The full picture (what everything adds up to, what income it might produce, whether it's enough) requires putting all of those fragments together in one place.

Many experienced broadcast professionals find that they've never done this. Not through carelessness, but because no natural moment to do it ever arose. The work kept coming, the pots kept accumulating quietly in the background, and the question of what it all added up to kept getting deferred to later.

How to find pension pots you've lost track of

If some of your pension pots have gone quiet (statements stopped arriving, you can't remember the provider, the production company that set it up no longer exists) there are practical steps worth taking.

The government's Pension Tracing Service allows anyone to search for workplace or personal pension schemes using an employer's name. It's free to use and can identify the contact details of a pension provider even if the original employer is no longer trading. It doesn't tell you how much is in the pot, but it gives you a starting point for making contact.

For broadcast and production specifically, it's worth noting that many productions are set up as separate legal entities - a single series might have been produced by a company that only existed for the duration of that commission. Searching by the production company name rather than the broadcaster or channel is often more useful.

A newer tool worth knowing about is Gretel, a free service that searches across multiple financial providers (including pension providers) to help people find lost or dormant financial assets. It's straightforward to use and has proved useful for people with fragmented financial histories of exactly the kind that a long career in broadcast and production tends to produce.

Whether consolidating makes sense

Once all the pots are located and their values established, a common question is whether to bring them together into a single pension - typically a SIPP.

There are circumstances where consolidation makes sense. Fewer pots to monitor, the possibility of reducing overall charges, and a clearer single view of the total position are all genuine benefits. Managing a single pension also tends to make income planning simpler when the time comes to start drawing from it.

There are also circumstances where consolidation may not be straightforward or advisable. Some older pension schemes carry guaranteed benefits (guaranteed annuity rates or defined benefit elements) that can be lost on transfer. These are worth identifying carefully before any decision is made, because in some cases the guaranteed benefit is significantly more valuable than the transfer value might suggest.

This is an area where taking regulated financial advice before acting is worth considering, particularly if the total value across all pots is substantial or if any of the schemes are older defined benefit arrangements.

The more important point

The number of pension pots a broadcast freelancer ends up with matters less than knowing what they all add up to.

For many experienced professionals in this industry, the full pension picture (when everything is finally located, valued, and assembled in one place) turns out to be considerably stronger than the fragments suggested. Pots that hadn't been checked in years have continued to grow. Contributions made during a long run on a well-paying series have compounded over time. The total, seen clearly for the first time, changes the picture of what's financially possible.

That's usually the more useful discovery. Not just how many pots there are, but what they actually mean.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute regulated financial advice. If you are considering consolidating pensions or making decisions about pension transfers, it may be worth speaking with a qualified independent financial adviser.