How long it takes to move your pension in the UK – and why that could change
Key Points
- Simple UK pension transfers averaged 10 days in the year to 31 March 2026, down from 10.2 days.
- Overall transfer times, including complex cases, came in at 11 days across 1.8 million transfers worth £78.60 billion.
- PensionBee found the slowest providers took 47 to 90 days to release savers' money in 2025, against five days for the fastest.
- A petition signed by more than 16,500 savers drew a government response in January 2026, with the DWP considering electronic processes and changes to the 2021 transfer regulations.
- The Value for Money framework consultation closes on 1 September 2026, with PensionBee pushing for transfer times to be published as a service metric.
Simple pension transfers in the UK took an average of 10 days over the year to 31 March, the quickest the industry has managed in nearly two years.
Origo, whose transfer service handles most defined contribution pension transfers in the UK, tracks the figure through its Transfer Index.
Simple transfers, which account for almost 90% of cases, averaged 10 days, down from 10.2 days a year earlier, while overall times including more complex cases needing third-party information improved to 11 days from 11.4 days.
The index covers almost 30 voluntary participants, among them many of the UK’s largest providers, and recorded 1.8 million transfers over the period, up from 1.7 million, with a total value of £78.60 billion.
It measures how long the provider losing the money takes to complete the request, including due diligence checks and the sale of funds, before the money reaches the new provider.
PensionBee’s own analysis of 35 major providers and administrators sending money to it during 2025 found the fastest completed a transfer in five days and the slowest took between 47 and 90 days, naming Cushon Master Trust, Creative Pension Trust, XPS Administration, the Local Government Pension Scheme and Capita among them.
Average transfer times across that group stood at 23 days in 2025, against 21 days in 2024, with the top 20 providers driving most of the improvement.
More than 16,500 savers from all 650 UK constituencies signed PensionBee’s parliamentary petition calling for a 10-day pension switch guarantee, and the government issued a formal response on 22 January 2026, confirming the Department for Work and Pensions was considering operational improvements including greater use of electronic processes, alongside further work on the pension transfer regulations introduced in 2021.
Alongside the petition, PensionBee published three reports setting out four reforms:
- Mandatory digital transfers across all schemes,
- A guarantee that most defined contribution transfers complete within ten working days,
- Published provider performance data,
- Reform of the amber and red flag scam rules that can be used as grounds for delay.
What could change
PensionBee responded to the Financial Conduct Authority’s consultation on adapting its requirements for a changing retirement savings market, restating its call for a universal 10-working-day transfer standard and for transfer times to be published as a service metric within the Value for Money framework.
The provider set out the position in its interim results, published on 13 August 2026, which also reported 327,000 customers and £8.60 billion of assets.
The Department for Work and Pensions and the FCA published their latest joint proposals on the Value for Money framework on 13 July in a consultation paper, described as the final set of proposals before implementation, with feedback due by 1 September.
Once implemented, schemes in scope will have to report on a range of metrics and use that data to assess their offering against comparators.
