How to find your lost pension

Do you know where all of your pension is being held? If you’ve had multiple jobs, you'll likely have a few pension pots with various providers. Here's how to find them...

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Capital at risk

According to The Guardian, as of 2019 there was £19bn sat in lost pensions, so you’re not alone if you're not sure where all of your are.

Knowing where your money is means you can keep track of how much you have put away for the future as well as keeping on top of the fees set by the providers of your workplace pensions. There are two main options when tracing your missing pensions:

Contact your providers

If you know who the pension providers were at each of your previous places of work, you can contact them directly and request all information linked to your account. If not, contacting your previous employers is a great place to start. Reach out to the HR department, prepared with your dates of employment and your National Insurance number, and ask for the provider’s details.

Contact the Pension Tracing Service

If you’d rather not reach out to your previous employers, you can use the Pension Tracing Service. This is a free Government service with which you can check which pension provider is used by your previous employer. All you need to know is the type of pension you’re looking for (personal or workplace), and the name of the company. This information will bring up the name and contact information for your provider.

Congratulations, you’ve found all of your pension pots! What comes next?

Once you’ve tracked down all of your pension pots, you’ll have a well-rounded picture of the money you have put away in preparation for your retirement as well as all of the fees that you’re paying. Armed with this information, you’ll be in the perfect position to assess whether you’re happy to have various pension products, or if you would be better off consolidating them into one pension.

Consolidating (or combining) your old pension pots could have lots of benefits. You could save money on fees and keeping all your pension funds with one provider can help you to better understand what’s in your current retirement fund, but it’s not without some risk. You could lose benefits from older pensions by transferring, and fees in financial services are notoriously complicated – it's hard to understand what’s best for you.

There are many things that you wouldn’t do without a professional. For example, we wouldn’t expect you to fix a car without the help of a mechanic, and so we certainly don’t expect you to decide what to do with your pension without the help and advice from our qualified team of advisers. Our advisers will review your current pensions for free and tell you if it’s in your best interest to transfer to us.  

All you need to do is answer a few simple questions about your current financial situation, your long-term goals, and your current pension products. We’ll take this information, contact your current providers, and offer you personalised advice. There’s no pressure to take our advice, it’s your pension and your decision, and the team will be on hand if you want to talk anything through. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the team via our contact us page.

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