How to top up your pension and help close the gender pension gap

This article was last updated on 27/02/2026

It’s estimated that two-in-three people will have to take time out of work to care for someone during their lifetime. This equates to an estimated £5,000 in pension savings for every year taken out of paid work. This time away from work during crucial earning years can have ramifications for the amount that women save into a pension over a working lifetime. In 2025 PensionBee’s annual study found that the gender pension gap stood at 37%. So what can you do to help close this gap and make sure your retirement savings don’t suffer?

How to top up your pension

1. Combine your old pensions

Track down old pensions from previous jobs to check how much you’ve got and find out what fees you’re paying. It might well be worth consolidating them into one plan so you can easily keep track and reduce the amount of fees you’re paying. If you think you have old pensions but don’t know how to find them, use the government’s free Pension Tracing Service.

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2. Make the most of your annual allowance

If you have a personal pension or a workplace pension, you could consider making extra contributions to boost your retirement savings. There’s an annual limit to how much you can contribute called the 'annual allowance'. The annual allowance is the limit on the gross amount that can be saved into a pension each tax year without incurring tax charges. The current standard annual allowance for pension contributions is ^{_annual_allowance} (^{_current_tax_year_yyyy_yy}) - this includes personal, employer and any third party contributions.

If you’d like to exceed the allowance in a given year you may be able to increase your tax-free contributions by using the ‘carry forward‘ rule. This enables you to carry forward any unused allowance from the previous three tax years. So if you haven’t used all of your recent allowances, you could use them to top up your pension in the current tax year. Find out more about carry forward and pension contribution limits.

3. Increase your contributions

If you’re enrolled in a workplace pension, you’ll typically be paying in 5% of your qualifying salary. Your employer will be paying a minimum of 3%. As well as increasing your own contributions, you could ask your employer about contribution matching - if you increase your contributions (within the annual allowance), your employer might agree to pay more into your pension too. Each employer will be different but they’ll usually have a limit as to how much they’ll contribute. It’s worth asking your HR department for more information.

Some things to remember

If you want to top up your pension and start closing the gender pension gap:

• make sure you’re enrolled into your workplace pension scheme;
• set up a self-employed pension if you work for yourself;
• consider increasing your personal and workplace contributions if you can;
• ask your employer about contribution matching;
• track down any old pensions from previous jobs;
• consider consolidating your pensions so your eligible retirement savings are in one place; and
• use ‘carry forward’ to make the most of any unused annual allowance if you’re able to.

Samantha Downes is a financial journalist and has written for most national newspapers and women’s magazines. She is also the author of two finance guides and has set up the Substack PumpkinPensions to help guide people looking to save more towards their future.

Risk warning

As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.