A pension saver asked for help as they were struggling to find their details
Consumer advocate Martin Lewis has pointed to some helpful guidance after a question about pensions and National Insurance. The person asked for help with managing their retirement pots as they were facing a “long winded” process.
Contacting Mr Lewis on social media, the person asked: “Can you kindly help me with a problem if you can? I want to find my old pensions but all sites are asking for all my employers.”
They said having to provide all this information was “long-winded”, asking if Mr Lewis knew of an “easier way” to check if they have any lost pensions, by simply providing their National Insurance number. A person can end up with several pension pots over the course of their career, as they change employer and move between different jobs, and you may have forgotten about one or more of them.
If you use the Pension Tracing Service on the Government website, you need to provide the details of the pension provider or your old employer to do the search. If you have worked for several companies over the years, you may well have a pile of paperwork to sort through to find these details.
Fortunately, Mr Lewis had a simple answer for the pension pot seeker. He told the person: “Try Gretel”. This is a free tool to help reconnect people with any lost accounts in their name, be they pensions, bank accounts, investments or trust funds.
To use the service, you simply provide your name, current address and date of birth. Gretel will then show you any past addresses linked to your name, for you to confirm. The fintech tool will then use these details to search for any assets in your name, such as pension pots.
It’s definitely worth your time checking if you have any lost pensions, as this can increase your finances by many thousands of pounds. Mr Lewis shared recently on his BBC podcast how he had heard of people finding pots worth £120,000 by checking.
Speaking on the BBC show, he recommended another tool to help in managing your pensions. Mr Lewis said: “If you don’t know what you’re doing with pensions, get in touch with Pension Wise, which is a sort of a semi-governmental agency to give you free guidance on pensions. You can just call them up or go online.”
You can book an appointment through Pension Wise to discuss when you can access your pension pots, the different ways to take out funds, and the tax implications. The current age you can access your private pensions is 55.
This is increasing to 57 in April 2028. This is also the date when the state pension age will reach 67. The access age for the state pension is currently increasing in stages from 66 to 67, moving up in one-month increments between April 2026 and April 2028.
