HMRC's own research, published to mark Pension Awareness Week, says almost seven million UK adults have never checked their State Pension forecast, and the age group least likely to have looked is 45 to 54 — the decade when it actually starts to matter. My reaction to that isn't "everyone should check their pension," which is the obvious, harmless message HMRC's campaign is built around. It's that the group with the most to lose from not checking isn't really the general public the campaign is aimed at. It's company directors who pay themselves a small salary on an accountant's advice, and who often assume that salary is quietly building their State Pension in the background. For a meaningful number of them, it isn't, and the reason why changed relatively recently without most of them being told.
What HMRC actually found
The survey behind this release found one in eight UK adults (12.5%) have never checked their State Pension forecast at all, and almost a third have checked it using the HMRC app or the online service, giving them a clear picture of what to expect in retirement. The reasons people gave for not checking: 26% said retirement still feels too far away, 24% worried about losing track of pension pots from old jobs, 20% weren't sure how a career break might affect their entitlement, 9.5% said they simply don't know how to check, 5% thought it would be too complicated, and 17% said they only think about pensions at big financial moments such as the start of a new tax year. Myrtle Lloyd, HMRC's Chief Customer Officer, put it plainly: "It's never too early, or too late, to check your State Pension forecast. Checking your forecast on the HMRC app takes just a few minutes but can make a real difference to how prepared you feel for the future." The app itself does more than show a number — it shows gaps in your National Insurance record, and lets you top up where a gap exists.
Why a director's salary doesn't automatically buy a qualifying year
Every year of your State Pension entitlement depends on having a "qualifying year" on your National Insurance record — a year in which your earnings reached at least 52 times the weekly Lower Earnings Limit (LEL). For 2026/27 that LEL is £129 a week, £6,708 a year. Reach that and HMRC treats you as having paid National Insurance for the whole year, even on the part of your earnings below the Primary Threshold where you don't actually pay a penny of it. Miss it, even by a small margin, and the year doesn't count towards your pension at all.
That distinction used to be close to academic for a lot of small company directors, because for years the Secondary Threshold — the point at which an employer starts paying employer's National Insurance — sat close to or above the LEL. Paying a salary at the old "NI-free" level and clearing the LEL were roughly the same decision. They aren't any more. For 2026/27, the Secondary Threshold is £5,000 a year, over £1,700 below the LEL. A director paying themselves the old textbook "no NI at all" salary of £5,000 is now, without anyone necessarily telling them, paying themselves a salary that doesn't earn a qualifying year — while still believing it does, because the payroll pattern that used to guarantee both hasn't been reviewed since the thresholds moved apart.
Three salaries, worked through
Take an illustrative sole-director limited company for 2026/27, comparing three salary levels a director might genuinely be paying themselves this year:
| Sole-director salary, 2026/27 | £5,000 | £6,708 (LEL) | £12,570 (PT) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employee NI due | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Employer NI due (15% above £5,000) | £0 | £256.20 | £1,135.50 |
| Counts as a qualifying year? | No | Yes | Yes |
The Employment Allowance, which can wipe out up to £10,500 of employer National Insurance a year, doesn't rescue the middle or right-hand column for most one-person companies: a company whose sole director is its only employee above the Secondary Threshold cannot claim it — one of the most common payroll mistakes on a first hire, and the reason that employer NI figure is real money rather than a number that gets refunded elsewhere. Salary and employer NI are both deductible against corporation tax, currently 19% on profits up to £50,000 and 25% above £250,000, which softens the cost of the higher salary but doesn't remove it.
What it means in practice
If you're a director on a salary set some years ago and haven't reviewed it since, the number that matters is £6,708, not £5,000. A salary below the LEL costs nothing in National Insurance and buys nothing in pension either — it's the one scenario where "efficient" and "free" stop meaning the same thing. Checking your forecast in the HMRC app takes minutes and will show directly whether this year, and recent years, actually counted.
If you're self-employed, the equivalent mechanism is different: you build a qualifying year through Class 2 National Insurance once profits reach the Small Profits Threshold, currently £7,105, or by paying it voluntarily below that. It's worth checking your own forecast for the same reason — self-employed profits fluctuate, and a thin year can quietly break a run of qualifying years without you noticing at the time, which is something our Self Assessment clients ask about once they've actually looked at their record.
If you're an employee on PAYE earning comfortably above the LEL as a matter of course, this specific gap mostly doesn't apply to you — but the wider finding still does. A third of the 45-to-54 age group, the decade closest to seeing their pension become a real retirement plan rather than an abstraction, have never looked at what they're actually going to get.
What to do this week
Check your own forecast. The Check your State Pension forecast service on gov.uk, or the HMRC app, shows your forecast, your full National Insurance record year by year, and any gaps — for free, in a few minutes.
If you're a director, check this year's salary against £6,708, not against what your payroll was set to two or three years ago. Thresholds move every April; a salary that cleared the LEL comfortably a few years back may not still clear it, and a salary deliberately set at the old NI-free level needs a second look now that level sits below the LEL.
If you find a gap, don't assume it needs fixing immediately. Voluntary Class 3 contributions cost £18.40 a week for 2026/27 — £956.80 to buy back a full year — and you can normally pay for gaps going back six tax years. Whether that's worth paying depends on how many qualifying years you already have and how many working years are still ahead of you, which is exactly the kind of check worth doing before paying rather than after.
What's still uncertain
HMRC's release doesn't say how it will measure whether this campaign moves the "never checked" figure, or when it will next report on it — Pension Awareness Week is an annual fixture, so the honest expectation is that we find out at the same point next September, not sooner. What is settled and won't move mid-year is the mechanics above: the LEL, Primary Threshold and Secondary Threshold are fixed for the whole of the 2026/27 tax year, so a salary review done now holds until next April regardless of what the Autumn Budget changes elsewhere.
We set director salaries as part of payroll for a reason that's bigger than avoiding National Insurance — it's making sure the salary a director is paying themselves this year is still doing what they think it's doing. If you're not sure whether yours clears the Lower Earnings Limit, that's exactly what our Payroll & Pensions service checks, and it's worth putting alongside a wider look at salary and dividend planning if the answer turns out to be no.