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You will normally be able to start accessing your pension from the age of 55, although this is expected to rise in the coming years. If anyone contacts you claiming to be in a position to help you access your pension pot before reaching the required age is highly likely to be acting fraudulently and should be reported immediately.

You won’t be able to access your State Pension until you reach the State Pension age, as set by the government. Your State Pension age will depend on when you were born, as the government has been increasing the State Pension age to account for the ageing population. Since October 2020 the State Pension age has been 66 for both men and women, but it’s increasing and will reach 67 by 2028. This may well change again; you can check your current retirement age on gov.uk.

As of February 2018, all employees aged over 22 and under State Pension age who earn more than £10,000 a year, are automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme. Unless you have chosen to opt-out of your workplace pension scheme, you are likely to have one. If you are unsure, speak to your employer for more information.

The choice is up to you. You may not necessarily need a private pension if you already have a workplace pension, but if you want to save more for your retirement, you may want to open one and make additional contributions.

There are a number of reasons why you may wish to transfer your pensions. These include switching jobs, wanting to find a better pension plan, or just to move your pension pots into one single pension.

Remember, depending on the type of pension you have, transferring them may not always be the right thing to do, for example, if you have a final salary pension. MoneyHelper offers free, impartial guidance to help you determine the steps you need to take, if you wish to transfer your pension plan.

Upon your death, your pension may be redistributed as a form of benefits to any financial dependents you may have chosen. If no dependents are listed at the time of your death, benefits can end up being paid directly to your estate instead. For more information about what happens to your pension when you die you should speak to your pension provider.

Yes, parents and guardians can open a pension for their child. You can invest up to £2,880 a year and get 20% tax relief on this, and the child will gain control of their pension when they turn 18. However, as with other pensions, they won’t be able to withdraw money from their pension fund until they turn 55, or older if the government changes the minimum age in the future.

There’s no limit to the number of pensions you can have, so you can have more than one workplace pension, private pension, or SIPP.

However, although you can have multiple pensions, your total pension pots can’t add up to more than the lifetime allowance, which is £1,073,100 for 2021/22 without facing additional tax consequences. There is also an annual contribution limit of100% of your earnings or £40,000, whichever is lower. Any amount over these limits won’t qualify for tax relief.

If your provider is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) you may be covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), which means that you may be entitled to compensation should the provider or the firm holding your pension investments goes bust. The same way pensions are complex products so is the protection offered on them to consumers, and these can vary greatly depending on who your provider is and how they hold your funds. Please check the FSCS website for full details of what is covered.

It's important to stress that even though there may be a certain level of protection for a company becoming insolvent, there is no protection if your investments simply lose value.