Unclaimed Pensions

It’s actually far more possible for a person to lose track on money in a pension, whether it’s occupational or personal, than you might imagine (for obvious reasons, this doesn’t include state pensions).

You might have been in a job for a short while and not realised money was being put in a pension fund, or it might involve someone else, now dead, who didn’t know they had some money in a pension, or had forgotten it was there (which might be more common in the case of a personal pension).

Finding a Pension

There’s a total of approximately 200,000 occupational and personal pension schemes in existence. That’s a massive figure, far, far bigger than banks or building societies. Trying to track one possible pension in all of those could be rather like looking for a needle in a haystack for an individual, at least without a great deal of information when starting.

However, the Pension Service can help with this – at least to an extent. They maintain a database of all the schemes, both past and present. It costs nothing to use it, and you can access it through the website, via mail or on the phone.

After you’ve requested a trace, the service will contact you with the result. If they discover that you, or whoever you’re representing, has money in a pension, they’ll give you the contact details for the fund so you can follow up and claim the money.

Lost Pension Finder

Pensions are the biggest pot of unclaimed money in the UK. This interactive tool walks through your old jobs and maps out exactly how to track down a workplace or personal pension you have lost touch with.

Try our Lost Pension Finder free, here on this site →

What They Need From You

Be aware, though, that without a certain amount of information there’s not a lot they can do. You’ll need to supply them with your own details, obviously, as well as the name of the pension scheme or the employer (with their full name and address, information on whether the employer changed names and whatever else you know). If at all possible, it would also be useful to supply information on the type of pension scheme – occupational, personal, etc.

Obviously, the more details you can supply, the greater the likelihood of them being able to locate the pension. You can even use this service if you live outside the UK but believe you have a claim on a UK private pension.

Your situation may be slightly different. ask a question below ↓ and our editorial team will reply with our advice.

Claiming The Money

The Pension Service can help put you in touch with whoever has the pension, but you’ll be on your own when it comes to making the claim, although, in most cases, the procedure should be fairly straightforward.

You’ll need to establish your claim and prove your identity. From that point it should be simple to obtain payment. If you’re the heir to an estate with a pension it might take a little longer for the claim to go through – but you might also have had quite a job even tracking down the pension in the first place.

The Next Step

Now that you have read through the advice above, you might want to put it into practice. Our Lost Pension Finder lets you pensions are the biggest pot of unclaimed money in the UK. This interactive tool walks through your old jobs and maps out exactly how to track down a workplace or personal pension you have lost touch with. Try it now →