How to find lost pensions

How pensions get lost

• You've moved house without updating your details with your pension provider. This means important documents, such as your annual statement, are unlikely to reach you. You may lose track of correspondence altogether, and over time forget you ever even had a pension with that employer.
  

• You've changed jobs a lot over the years. Any new workplace pension won't necessarily be with the same pension provider as your previous one (or transfer across automatically), meaning it can be easy to forget who your old pension was with in years to come – especially if you were only with an employer for a short amount of time.
  

• Your pension provider has merged or rebranded. This could make it difficult to know which company you now need to contact.

Is your pension definitely lost?

Just because you were employed somewhere, it doesn't always mean you'll have had a pension through that employer.

Nowadays, employers must automatically enrol most employees into their workplace pension schemes, so you're likely to have pensions from more recent jobs – but this wasn't always the case. Pension rules have changed over the years, so whether you built up a pension could depend on when and how long you were working for.

Although it might vary from one pension scheme to another, as a rough guide the following generally applies:

Before April 1975

If you left your employer before April 1975, it's likely you'll have had any pension contributions refunded. Also some schemes didn't require members to pay contributions, so you wouldn't be entitled to any pension benefits if this was the case.

April 1975 to April 1988

If you left your employer between April 1975 and April 1988, were over age 26 and had completed five years' service by the time you left, a pension may have been kept for you. If you left with less than five years' service, you might have had your contributions refunded.

April 1988 onwards

If you left your employer after April 1988, you might be entitled to a pension. This is provided you had completed two years' service. If you left with less than two years' service, you might have had your contributions refunded.

Some pension-tracing inspiration

You do have to put in some legwork to trace old or missing pensions, but considering it can result in some large sums of money, it's definitely worth putting in the effort, as Richard demonstrates...

'I found more than £137,000 in an old pension. I'm a big fan and want to say thanks!'

MoneySaver Richard followed Martin's tips after hearing about others who'd successfully found lost pensions.

After a few months, he managed to locate his old pension provider and a few calls later he'd found an old work pension which he'd stopped paying into during the 1990s. Richard wrote to us in April 2023:

How to find lost pensions for FREE – step-by-step

If you're beginning to think about your retirement, having a good understanding of how much your pension savings are worth can make planning easier – which means finding any lost or old pensions is a vital step in this process. Here are some steps you can take to try and find any old or lost pensions...

1. Make a list of all your old employers so you know how many pensions you're looking for. You should have details on pension statements, but if you can't find these, try contacting the HR department at old employers to see if they can help find details of previous workplace pension schemes you might have been part of.
   

2. Use the FREE Pension Tracing Service. If you can't find any paperwork and you can't get hold of the old employer, you could try the simple, free tool from the Pension Tracing Service. It has details of more than 200,000 different pension schemes, and will help you find an up-to-date contact address for the scheme you're looking for. You can also call on 0800 731 0193.
   

3. Once you've got the details from the Pension Tracing Service contact the pension firm. They'll need to check your details (the ID you'll need will vary by the firm), but commonly it'll be your National Insurance number, possibly Passport or Driving licence and a utility bill. Don't be put off - most firms will have an email address or contact form on their websites and can talk you through the process.
   

No luck or can't remember details?

While the Pension Tracing Service has a huge database, you need to remember the names of your past workplaces or of private pension plan providers.

Gretel, a fintech firm set up in 2022, works differently – so might be worth a try. It's also free because the financial firms pay it (as they've a duty to try and find you, and this likely fulfils that need more cheaply than doing it themselves). Here's how it works:

• Create a Gretel account using your email address and a password. You’ll then need to enter your name, date of birth, phone number and postcode. Gretel will send a verification email for you to activate your account.

• Once activated, Gretel will run a 'soft search' on your credit report (this won't impact your credit score) to find any previous addresses, and ask you to confirm these (you can also add any that are missing)

• It'll then run a search for missing pensions (as well as investments, bank accounts, shares, life insurance and child trust funds) with initial results within a few minutes. You'll be able to see any search matches on your dashboard.

• Gretel will continue to search every 14 days for new matches, so if a new firm joins it and there's a new hit, it'll let you know.

• You can ‘improve’ your profile by adding your NI number and any previous names you went by.

• You can also add any ‘third party’ names to your account to search for assets in another name as long as you have the legal authority to do this. You'll need to upload the relevant document before you can view details for a third party, such as a Power of Attorney or Grant of Probate.

What do I do when I find a lost pension?

If you do successfully find a lost pension, you'll need to decide what to do next.

Unlike many other financial areas, with pensions, totally FREE guidance is available, online, via chat or on the phone, funded by a government levy on the finance industry.

Over-50s can speak to Pension Wise, everyone else can go to MoneyHelper. You find both at www.moneyhelper.org.uk or call 0800 011 3797 (opening times: Mon to Fri, 9am to 5pm).

Or consider paying for full independent financial advice: Guidance can talk you through rules, tax-efficient routes and options, but can't give you a personal decision, or talk about best products or investment choice. For that, you need to find a financial adviser. This is usually primarily for those with, or saving enough to get, bigger pension pots, let's say £50,000 minimum, so the gain offsets the cost. Yet while you do pay, getting it wrong on big amounts can cost more, so it's usually worth it.