Former college support worker Paul Haresnape discovered a forgotten personal pension pot that had grown to £25,000 after finding an old piece of paper while packing up during a house move in Cornwall, as new research reveals British workers could be missing up to £37,880 in unclaimed retirement savings.
Mr Haresnape, 58, paid £30 a month into a Barclays personal pension for one year while working at a hotel in the late 1980s as a 20-year-old. Having forgotten about the account and assuming it was worth very little, he emailed Barclays to investigate and learned that the policy had been transferred to pension provider ReAssure.
Upon contacting ReAssure, Mr Haresnape was astonished to find that the initial investments had grown to £25,000 over the intervening decades. "It was a wonderful surprise. I didn’t imagine it would be worth anything like this. It’s not often you get these windfalls," he said. "It was one of the happiest financial surprises of my life and it was down to a decision I made as a carefree 20 year old."
The windfall proved life-changing for Mr Haresnape, enabling him to resign from his position as an educational support worker at a college and relocate from Cornwall back to Devon to be closer to family and friends. He used a portion of the funds to cover living expenses while searching for a new home and position. "It’s allowed me to go freelance, which is something I really wanted to do. I’m now a youth and young offender mentor," he said.
National scale of forgotten pension pots
Pensions are easily misplaced when workers change jobs, marry, or move house without updating their contact details with former scheme administrators. The introduction of automatic enrollment, which places employees into new workplace pension schemes whenever they start a new job, has led to individuals accumulating more separate pension pots than ever before.
According to figures from the Pensions Policy Institute, a UK think-tank specialising in retirement research, UK savers have lost track of 3.3 million pension pots containing a staggering £31.1 billion. Separate research by the institute indicates that the average value of a lost pension pot stands at £9,470.
Analysis by wealth management platform Moneybox highlights a wide gap between the number of employers individuals have worked for and the number of pension pots they remember saving into. Workers in Wales face the highest potential losses in the UK, having worked for an average of five employers over their careers while reporting only one known pension pot. That leaves an average gap of four lost pots per person, equivalent to £37,880 in missing retirement money.
Significant shortfalls exist across all regions of the UK. Savers in the South East, South West, Scotland, Northern Ireland, North East, East of England, and West Midlands are estimated to be missing an average of three pension pots, representing £28,410 in uncollected savings. In London, the North West, East Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber, workers are likely missing two pots worth an average of £18,940.
Brian Byrnes of Moneybox emphasised that small pots accumulate into substantial wealth over a working life. "Even if each pot seems relatively small, together they can add up to tens of thousands of pounds," Mr Byrnes said. "Tracking down old pensions is one of the simplest actions people can take to improve their long-term financial future."
Step one: Checking home paper records
Former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb, now a partner at financial consultancy LCP and one of the country's leading pension experts, has set out a five-step strategy for savers searching for missing pension funds.
Sir Steve recommends starting by searching through physical paperwork stored at home for plan numbers, dates of birth, National Insurance numbers, and scheme setup dates. "For this reason it’s important that, even today, people keep all correspondence regarding their pensions rather than throwing it away," Sir Steve said.
He noted that modern pension scheme correspondence is increasingly delivered electronically via email or online web portals. Savers should carefully log website addresses and account credentials to prevent getting locked out of their digital accounts. "If you find these details, for example, if you know the name of the company your pension was invested with, then you should contact it with your plan number, date of birth, your National Insurance number and the date your pension was set up," Sir Steve added, though he cautioned that many people will lack sufficient documentation to rely on paperwork alone.
Step two: Tracing former employers
When paperwork is unavailable, the next step involves finding out whether a former employer is still trading or operating under a different name. Contact details for an old employer often allow savers to trace the scheme administrator responsible for their pension.
Savers can search Companies House, the free online database of UK-registered businesses managed by the government at gov.uk/companies-house, to check the history and status of former employers. Once current contact details are identified, written requests for pension information can be sent to the company.
Additionally, workers should check National Insurance records for indications that they were "contracted out" of the state pension system. In contracted-out schemes, employers paid reduced National Insurance contributions and directed those funds into company pension plans instead. Employees who were contracted out receive a smaller state pension but a larger private workplace sum. HM Revenue and Customs holds scheme reference numbers and names for contracted-out periods, which savers can provide to pension providers to claim accumulated funds.
Step three: Using government tracing services
If an employer cannot be located through Companies House, Sir Steve advises using the government's official Pensions Tracing Service at gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details. "It’s a kind of glorified telephone directory that can provide contact details for thousands of pension schemes, trustees or administrators. You will need to know the name of the company that you worked for to use it," Sir Steve explained.
The service helps locate pension administration companies responsible for managing workplace schemes. Most modern workers hold defined contribution pensions, which are personal pots of money managed by commercial pension providers rather than employers. Because these pots are held independently, funds remain secure even if a former employer becomes insolvent.
Sir Steve warned that missing records on the Pensions Tracing Service do not mean a pension is lost forever, as employers may have renamed, closed, or operated untracked pension types. He also warned against falling for paid online search results. "Many reputable companies run free services with no obligation to use their services afterwards but take care if you follow any links because some firms might charge you, try to sell you something else, or even be fraudulent," Sir Steve said.
Free commercial options include Gretel, an industry-backed service that searches across pensions, bank accounts, investments, and insurance policies in one platform. Pension providers such as Aviva, Aegon, and AJ Bell also offer free tracing services to combine retirement pots into single managed accounts. Savers are advised to review terms carefully before merging funds, as keeping existing schemes separate can sometimes be advantageous.
Sam Nixon, director at Aviva Wealth, reported that more than 110,000 customers have used Aviva's free service, discovering 70,000 pension pots worth over £1 billion in total. The average pot discovered was worth around £15,000, with the largest single pot reaching £1 million. "Many people would be delighted to find £20 in an old coat pocket, but we’ve helped customers uncover pensions worth more than £1billion in total," Mr Nixon said. "People often lose track of pensions after changing jobs or moving house but this money still belongs to them so tracking down an old pension could make a significant difference to their retirement income."
Step four: Following money and lifeboat protection
Because pension assets are held separately from employer balance sheets, savers can trace legacy insurance companies that took over historic pension portfolios. The Association of British Insurers maintains an A-Z directory of insurance company name changes over time at abi.org.uk/data-and-resources/tools-and-resources/find-lost-pension/.
For older defined benefit pensions, which guarantee a fixed lifetime income based on final salary, protection exists if the former employer went into liquidation without enough assets to meet obligations. In such cases, schemes are transferred to the Pension Protection Fund, a statutory lifeboat scheme. Savers can search the database of covered schemes at ppf.co.uk/schemes and contact the fund directly.
Step five: Networking with former colleagues
Sir Steve suggests reaching out to former workmates as a final avenue for tracking down elusive schemes. "If enough time has gone by, a former colleague may be in receipt of a pension from the very scheme your trying to locate. They may be able to give you the right contact details," Sir Steve said.
Former colleagues can often be located via professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, where individuals frequently maintain active profiles into retirement. Larger companies may also have retired employee associations whose members possess detailed institutional knowledge regarding historical pension schemes. Sir Steve Webb's full guide to locating lost pensions is published online at go.lcp.com/lost-pensions.
