Reunite with your pension
Don’t miss out on a share of the £31 billion in lost pension pots, says Paul Lewis.
There is more than £31 billion languishing unclaimed in pension funds. But no one knows how to reunite it with the estimated 3.3 million who own a share of it.
That extraordinary finding comes from a report by the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI). The money is in so-called “lost pension pots” – pensions that individuals and their employers have paid into but are now forgotten.
Calculate how much more income you could get instantly by using our online annuity calculator.
Since the PPI first looked at this problem in 2018 the number of lost pots has doubled and the money in them has grown by almost £12 billion.
The biggest amounts are waiting to be claimed by people aged 55 to 75, who have mislaid an average of £13,620 each. They can take out this money at once if they wish (a quarter of it tax-free, the rest taxed as income) or pay in more and consider how to use that money best when they retire. Older people also have missing pensions worth on average about half as much.
There are many under-55s who have lost track of their pensions, too. They cannot access them until they reach 55, but once they identify the money they can consider consolidating it with other pensions or paying more in to give them a bigger pension in the future.
Pots get lost easily. As we change jobs, address or even our name, the scheme holding the money can lose track of us. The problem is getting worse because since 2012 every employer has to set up a pension scheme for their workers and enrol all employees aged 22 to 65 and earning £10,000 a year or more. But when an individual changes jobs, the pension does not move with them – it stays in that employer’s scheme – so it’s very easy to build up numerous pots and lose touch with them.
Calculate how much more income you could get instantly by using our online annuity calculator.
You can check if there is money waiting for you online at gov.uk – search “pension tracing”. You will need as much information as you can find about previous employers, and your National Insurance number may help. There is also a free commercial site, gretel.co.uk, that will need your addresses, names and National Insurance number.
Remember, this is your money. Why not make 2025 the year you are reunited?