“There’s a staggering 30 billion quid, that’s 30,000 million pounds of lost pensions in the UK, an average of nine and a half grand each,” explained the Money Saving Expert founder, in a new video post.
“I’ve got four steps to show you how you can check if you’ve got money and lost pensions.”
He adds: “This is worth looking at. Often you don’t think pension is worth much, because you didn’t put much in a long time ago. But it’s compounded with the growth, and it can be big. Now, I’ve had people who found £100,000s. So the big question, how do you lose a pension? Can’t exactly fall out of your pocket.”
Are you owed £1,000s or £10,000s in lost pension savings? 4 quick steps to check & get it back.
Watch the video then full help at https://t.co/GDQUseb8UN pic.twitter.com/63YP6n4URR
— Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) July 3, 2025
The three main ways pensions get lost
You moved house without updating your details with the pension provider, and you’ve gradually lost track of it.
You’ve changed employers multiple times. Workplace pensions are often with different providers.
Your pension provider has merged or rebranded or renamed, and that can make it difficult to track down now when it comes to finding it.
How to check if you have a lost pension pot
Make a list of all your former employers and pension schemes. “If it’s employer based, contact your old the HR department of the firm that you work for, if it’s still in existence,” says Martin.
If it’s not employer based, contact that pension provider. “If you’re struggling with that step two, use the pension tracing service,” he says. “This is a service on gov.uk. Just put in Pension Service, and then you put in your pensions details. It’s got 200,000 listed there, and it will show you who is now in charge of that pension fund. So you connect with it.”
Once you know who the pension fund is, contact it, make sure you got ID, usually your National Insurance, sometimes your passport, driving license, and then ask to be reconnected to your pension fund.
What do you do then?
“Whether you can take the money out or not depends on your age, whether you should go to money helper or the Pension Service, which are free services that will give you one on one,” says Martin. “It’s not necessarily right to take money out just because you can.”
Recommended reading:
How to use the government pension tracing service
The website is here – and it’s all free to use.
You can find contact details for:
your own workplace or personal pension scheme
someone else’s scheme if you have their permission
You need the name of an employer or a pension provider to use this service.
You can also request contact details from the Pension Tracing Service by phone or by post.
Telephone: 0800 731 0175
or by post at
The Pension Service
Post Handling Site A
Wolverhampton
WV98 1AF
United Kingdom
What if you still can’t find your pension?
“If you’ve had no luck or you don’t really have any idea of what’s going on, there is a FinTech firm called Gretel, what it does is it does a soft search on your credit file,” says Martin.
“So that’s a search that you see, but lenders don’t, so it doesn’t impact your credit worthiness, and then it will give you an ID, trying to match your ID using your prior address any dormant assets.
“So it’s not just pensions, it could be investments, bank account shares, life insurance, child trust funds. Now the problem with Gretel is the database isn’t as big as the pension tracing service.”