Payments to the dead could cost company pension schemes £400m

As many as 82,000 of the UK’s 8.2 million company pensions are reportedly being paid to dead people, costing businesses potentially £400m a year.

Trustees of company pension schemes are combing death registers to cut the number of pensions being paid to the deceased, according to the Times.

Accountancy firm Baker Tilly has conducted checks of death registers for trustees from 15 schemes in the past three months.

Mark Holland, a director of Baker Tilly, estimated that up to 10 in every 1,000 pensions were being paid to deceased beneficiaries, either through fraud or by accident.

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Just over eight million Britons receive company pensions. According to the Pensions Commission, these payments are worth 3 per cent of British gross domestic product, equal to about £40bn.