How to track down YOUR old pensions as it’s revealed more than 3million are lost with average of £6,220 inside

By TANYA JEFFERIES, PENSIONS AND INVESTMENT EDITOR

Savers have lost track of an estimated £18.7billion left sitting in more than three million orphaned pension funds, a new report reveals.

The average lost pot is worth £6,220, but this rises to £10,710 among people aged 55-74, who could miss out on a huge 38 per cent chunk of the pensions they are owed.

However, by far the largest number of misplaced pensions – where the owner cannot currently be contacted by the pension provider – are held by people aged under 55.

These make up 2.5million of all lost pots and £12.9billion of total orphaned assets, according to the new Lost Pensions Survey published by the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) think-tank.

That means a significant proportion are likely to be reunited with owners when they eventually decide to track down old funds in the run-up to retirement.

People often lose track of pension pots when they change address and don’t notify the pension schemes that ran their retirement funds at previous jobs.

Waiting to be found: Lost pensions are not gone for good but you will want to hunt them down by retirement

The PPI suggests the age spread for lost pots is down to rules limiting under-55s from accessing their pension savings (rising to 57 in 2028), as well as patterns of employment, automatic enrolment, and higher job mobility among younger workers.

The think-tank defines a lost pension as one where the provider is unable to contact the owner of the pot because they are no longer living at their last postal address, though some schemes have other criteria to categorise a member as missing on their records.

Long-promised pensions dashboards that will allow people to see all their retirement pots at a glance are expected to help many savers find pensions they had forgotten about or not bothered to check in with over the years.

There is still no launch date for the dashboards, but they are currently expected to go public in 2027-28.

The new PPI survey, which is supported by the Government-backed Money and Pensions Service, found only an estimated 8,000 of all lost pots belong to those over the age of 75.

However, pots remaining unclaimed after retirement age may be more likely to be genuinely lost for good.

The PPI says women’s lost pension wealth is more than 20 per cent lower on average, at £5,370 versus £6,830 for men.

The think-tank overhauled how it estimates lost pensions in its latest survey, by scaling pot numbers and value of assets separately, and including evidence on final salary – known as defined benefit – pensions for the first time.

Deputy director Dr Suzy Morrissey says lost pension pots remain a significant issue for savers, providers and policymakers.

And Oliver Morley, chief executive of the Money and Pensions Service, says: ‘The MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard being developed by MaPS, expected to launch in financial year 2027/28, will help tackle this problem.

‘As well as a single overview of pensions in one place, a dashboard will show pensions that people may have lost touch with.’

Steve Watson, director of policy at workplace pensions provider Cushon, says: ‘Lost pension pots haven’t disappeared – people have simply lost track of savings they’ve worked hard to build. Often, it’s because providers no longer have up-to-date contact details.

‘More than half a million pension pots worth over £5billion are estimated to be lost to people aged 55–74 in the UK.

‘The average pot of £10,700 is equivalent to around three years of pension contributions for a typical auto-enrolment saver contributing at the minimum rate on qualifying earnings.

This is Money’s pensions columnist Steve Webb has helped to reunite a number of readers with old retirement funds after they ran into brick walls when doing it alone.

He has the following advice – and you can read his full guide on the subject here.

Official paperwork can include vital detail like policy numbers which make the job of tracing lost pensions much easier. For this reason it’s vital that, even today, people keep all correspondence regarding their pensions rather than throwing it away.

2. Find out what happened to your former employer

Investigate whether the company you worked for at the time is still trading, whether it may have changed its name and whether you can still contact someone there today.

A good source of information is that provided by Companies House. Another is HMRC, where you can request your employment history from National Insurance records.

3. Try the Government’s pension tracing service

If you type ‘trace lost pension’ into a search engine you will be offered a lot of commercial tracing services.

Take care with these links as they may go to firms which charge, try to sell you other services, or be fraudulent.

However, the Government offers a (quite limited) Pension Tracing Service. It asks various questions and tries to identify an up-to-date contact.

Track down whether the pension provider was taken over by another business or whether the pension scheme assets may now be held by an insurance company or a compensation scheme such as the Pension Protection Fund.

Think about whether you are in touch with anyone whom you worked with at your old employer. Just one person who is receiving a pension from the scheme today would be enough to find contact details and hopefully find your lost pension.

If you are no longer in touch with anyone you used to work with, you may be able to track them down through social media sites.

For example, although LinkedIn is mainly used by those who are active in employment, people may leave records there even when they have retired.

Once you have found your pensions, a tidying up exercise can reduce fees and paperwork and bring new retirement investing options.

But merging pensions is not always advisable because you can risk losing valuable benefits – we look at the traps to avoid and what you need to know about combining pension pots here.

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