Financial expert Martin Lewis has highlighted the importance of retaining old paperwork, following a case where a woman increased her NHS pension by 20 per cent by unearthing payslips from the 1990s.
On his BBC Sounds and Spotify podcast, Lewis spoke to Jan, who realised her NHS pension was underpaid when she retired in 2022. The scheme calculates payments based on the best 12 months' pay, but because she had left the NHS and returned later to a lower-paying job, the system incorrectly used her more recent salary.
Jan appealed, but the initial rejection was due to the NHS only reviewing the last year of payslips. She then retrieved old payslips from 1990 to 1992 from a box in her wardrobe, which proved her earlier higher earnings. The adjudicator agreed, and her pension was uprated by 20 per cent.
Lewis advised listeners to keep important financial documents indefinitely, suggesting they can be digitised for safekeeping. He noted that data protection rules often mean firms delete old records, so personal copies are crucial for proving claims.
