As a safeguard against the risks of the coronavirus pandemic, the BP pensions administration team will now be working from home. The administration office in Sunbury is closed until further notice.
Please be assured that this does not affect your pension and if you are currently receiving one, we will continue paying it to you as normal. However, it does mean if you raise a query at this time, we cannot print, nor post anything to you in response. Please contact us before posting any important documents as there will be a delay in returning them to you.
For that reason, please log on to Pensionline to send any queries securely or alternatively by email to pensions@bp.com – confirming you are happy for us to send you a response using email and document security encryption.
You can still phone us on 0345 602 1063 if you have an urgent query, but please note that we are expecting high call volumes and our backup phone system is more limited than our usual one.
We can discuss the best way to help with your queries during this time, but as always to protect your personal data, we cannot disclose any personal information over the phone. We will look to send information securely by email if we have a verified email address for you. A verified email address is one which has been communicated to us after logging into Pensionline or sent to us with your signature.
Meanwhile please bear with us while we respond to this worldwide crisis.
Finally, despite the pandemic and recent investment market movements, the financial health of the Fund remains strong. At time of writing, the current estimated ‘funding level’ (the Fund’s assets as a percentage of its liabilities) is 105%.
Updated 17 March 2020
Defined Contributions Savings
The volatility in recent weeks, especially of equity markets, may have affected the value of your defined contribution savings pot if you:
- are in the BP Retailing or BPFM section of the BP Pension Fund.
- paid additional voluntary contributions (AVCs) into the BP Pension Fund.
The ups and downs of markets, while uncomfortable, are a normal part of investing. As a defined contribution saver, you should not make decisions based solely on short-term market movements – your retirement savings are a long-term investment.
If you are a BP Retailing or BPFM member invested in the ‘default’ strategy, the effect of recent events will depend on how close you are to retirement.
- If you are a long way from retirement the ‘default’ strategy will invest mainly in shares (equities). This type of asset is expected to give the best return in the long run but can also have quite significant falls in the short term – as has been the case in recent weeks.
- If you are closer to retirement, your savings have been gradually moving to more 'defensive' assets, such as bonds. This will have provided some protection to your savings during recent market volatility.
It is important to highlight that, over time, we expect markets to recover. Our advisers recommend staying calm and staying invested. Whatever happens, don’t make a rushed decision. If you are unsure of the suitability of an investment, you should seek independent financial advice.
Updating Personal details and contacting us
If you are having problems logging into the website or you have a question, you can contact the BP UK pensions and benefits team.
If you simply want to update some of your personal details, you can do this on PensionLine without having to write to us. If you are logged into PensionLine, follow these links to:
If you still need to contact us, you can do so by the following methods. Please have your employee number or pension membership number to hand to help us quickly find your details.
If you would like to write to the team, please send your letter to:
BP UK Pensions and Benefits
Building C
Chertsey Road
Sunbury
Middlesex
TW16 7LN
