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Money Box: On the trail of a missing insurance policy

12/01/2013

On the trail of a missing insurance policy

BBC Radio 4 - Money Box, On the trail of a missing insurance policy

How to find lost insurance policies; state pension reforms; new inflation index explained.

Paul Lewis on how to recover lost insurance policies. Plus state pension reforms, the new inflation measure explained, and how the Financial Services Compensation Scheme works.

A listener has contacted Money Box for help in finding his elderly father's lost insurance policy. Taken out in 1945, and with collections done door-to-door, no records were kept at the house. How do you trace missing policies and investments? And can Money Box uncover the money? (clue: yes, we can!)

The government has confirmed that it will publish details of its state pension reforms on Monday. Only a few details of the changes are being confirmed, but Money Box understands the new pension will begin in the next parliament - so no earlier than April 2016. The additional State Second Pension - what used to be called SERPS - will be scrapped. Instead there will be a single flat rate pension of £144 a week in today's terms. That is about £36 a week more than the current basic state pension. It will mean a bigger pension for self-employed people who don't pay into the state second pension and the low paid who get very little from it. You will still need a set number of national insurance contributions to get the full amount - probably 30 years like now and probably with a lower limit so, if you have fewer than 10 years, you may get nothing. Paul Lewis talks to Joanne Segars, chief executive of the National Association of Pension Funds.

There will be no change to the way the retail prices index is calculated, the Office for National Statistics announced this week. Instead, a new additional index of inflation - RPIJ - will be created. But the ONS has said the RPI does not meet international standards. So, what's wrong with it, will the new measure be an improvement, and could these announcements affect wage negotiations in the future? Paul Lewis discusses the issues with the Royal Statistical Society's Jill Leyland and the Financial Times' economics editor, Chris Giles.

Plus, Paul Lewis interviews the chief executive of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, David Neale, about why so few people realise what protection is available for their savings and investments.

Producer: Ruth Alexander.

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