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It’s easier than you might think to lose track of a pension – especially if you’ve changed jobs several times or moved home over the years. With changing jobs and schemes often managed by different providers, many people have forgotten accounts worth thousands of pounds.
Below, we’ll explain how to track down these lost or forgotten pensions, reconnect with your providers, and boost your retirement income by thousands of pounds.
What’s on this page?
Research from the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) found there were an estimated 3.3 million ‘lost’ pension pots in the UK in 2024, worth a combined £31.1 billion. Among people aged 55 to 75, the average value of a lost pot was £13,620.
Helen Morrissey, head of retirement analysis at Hargreaves Lansdown, says: “This is all money that can make a significant improvement to people’s lifestyles in retirement and could be the difference between struggling to make ends meet and being able to enjoy your golden years.”
According to a freedom of information request by Hargreaves Lansdown, the government’s pension tracing service received more than 273,700 calls between 1 January 2021 and 29 September 2025. That doesn’t include the number of people who only used the service online.
Some savers recover far more than the average amount. AJ Bell reports that users of its pension-finding service (run with Raindrop) typically uncover about £18,000 in lost savings. One user of the service discovered a single pot worth more than £750,000, while another found several pots totalling nearly £1 million.
Cast your mind back 30, or even 40, years. Where were you working? Can you remember if there was a pension scheme? How many times have you moved home since then?
The rise of auto-enrolment, combined with more frequent job changes, has led to a surge in the number of pension pots. Many workers now have multiple small pensions scattered across different providers.
When a policyholder moves house, communication is often lost, leaving providers without updated contact details. As a result, while the funds remain invested and growing, the provider can no longer reach the owner.
Different providers have different criteria for classifying a pension as ‘lost’, but usually it means the provider hasn’t heard from the saver for a long time, or has found the contact details it holds are no longer valid.
Another factor is that it can be tricky for pension savers to know who their pension is with, due to consolidation in the financial services industry. For example, Alliance & Leicester, Abbey, and Bradford & Bingley are all now Santander. Firms write to customers about these changes – but some people may disregard letters from firms they don’t recognise or have never dealt with.
When looking for lost pensions, the government’s free pension tracing service, operated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), is a useful port of call.
You can search by your former employer’s name (for workplace pensions) or by a pension company (for personal pensions) – so you’ll need to have this information. The tool searches a database of more than 200,000 schemes and provides the latest contact information for each provider or administrator.
Despite the name, the service doesn’t actually trace lost pensions for you. Once you have the contact details, it’s down to you to contact the provider directly to ask whether you have an account and request an up-to-date statement or transfer information. To do this, you’ll need to prove your identity – usually by providing your national insurance number and/or driving licence, passport and a utility bill.
Gretel, a fintech company launched in 2022, is also free to use. (It’s funded by the financial firms that it works with.) Unlike the government pension tracing service, you don’t necessarily need to remember your old employer or the pension provider’s name. Instead it uses your personal details to attempt a match.
To start using Gretel, you need to create an account with your name, date of birth, phone number, postcode, and a verified email and password.
Once your account is activated, Gretel performs a ‘soft search’ (the kind that doesn’t affect your credit score) on your credit file to find past addresses, which you can confirm or update. It then searches for lost pensions and other assets such as investments, bank accounts, shares, life insurance, and child trust funds.
Initial results appear within minutes, and Gretel keeps checking every 14 days for new matches, notifying you of any updates. Adding your national insurance number and any previous names can improve accuracy.
The drawback of Gretel is that it only has details of the providers that have chosen to work with it. It says it is continually expanding its network.
Some pension providers, including Standard Life, Aviva and AJ Bell, also offer free pension tracing services. These cover other providers too, not just pensions held with that company. With almost all of these services, there will be some providers not covered, and they should be able to tell you which providers these are.
If pensions are found, they will usually offer you the option to consolidate them into one of their own pensions, but there isn’t any obligation to do that.
If you’re trying to track down pensions that a loved one might have had, generally these services work in the same way. You’ll need to confirm your identity. The process will vary depending on whether there is a will in place or not.
If the pension is not actually ‘lost’ and you know the provider’s details, you’re generally better off contacting the provider directly instead.
The upcoming ‘pensions dashboard’ – a joint initiative between the government and pensions industry – will make it easier to find lost pensions in the future, as people will be able to see their pensions in one place, including the state pension.
Work is well under way on the programme, with pension providers connecting in stages. The public launch date is not expected to be until late 2026 at the earliest.
Mike Ambery, retirement savings director at Standard Life, says: “The advent of pensions dashboards is a potential game-changer that could alter how individuals manage their retirement savings in the future, offering a single, secure place to view all pension benefits.
“As dashboards roll out more widely, with the government being the first to launch, and many pension providers to follow quickly afterwards, the traditional need to search for lost pensions on a piecemeal basis may become a thing of the past.”
Bear in mind that pensions aren’t the only financial accounts you may have lost track of. Read how to track down lost bank accounts, savings, and Premium Bonds.
Once you have tracked down old pensions, you need to decide what to do with them. Pension consolidation is the process of combining multiple pension pots into a single pension plan.
Laura Suter, director of personal finance at AJ Bell, says: “There are plenty of reasons why combining your pensions with a single provider can be a good idea. Most obviously, a single retirement pot is much easier to track and manage than having various pensions with different providers.
“You could also benefit from lower costs and charges, increased income flexibility and more investment choice by switching provider.”
But consolidation isn’t always the best option. Some older pensions, particularly defined benefit schemes, may offer guaranteed income, valuable benefits, or protections that could be lost if transferred.
Before deciding, seek independent financial advice to ensure consolidation will benefit you.
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