Thousands of savers may have completely forgotten about their lost funds
People are being urged to make a simple check to see if they have forgotten savings worth an average of almost £10,000.
Millions of pension pots are believed to have been forgotten by their owners, with the average lost account holding £9,470 according to Pensions Policy Institute. But thanks to new tools, the route to reclaiming your lost funds may be far more simple than many believe.
One finance expert revealed exactly what people need to do to locate and reclaim all of their lost pension pots, with more than £31billion left behind in total across the UK. People who changed jobs frequently may be particularly at risk of having forgotten pots at old workplace schemes.
Antonia Medlicott, Founder and Managing Director of financial education specialists Investing Insiders, shared: “Finding old pensions may initially seem like a daunting task, but recent tools have made it far easier than it used to be.
“Your first step is to uncover the names of the pension providers used by your previous employment.”
A pension pot is officially considered ‘lost’ when the pension provider can’t contact the owner. This can be because they’ve changed jobs, contact details or address and failed to update the provider or move their money into their new workplace pension scheme.
People who have changed jobs, especially if they were only at their workplace for a short time, may forget that they had any money saved into a workplace pension there. Others may also assume that since they hadn’t put much into it, it may not be worth the effort of taking their savings with them to their new workplace.
Because pension pot providers are unable to contact the account owners, the only real way to figure out if you have a lost pension pot is to track it down yourself. The Gov.uk website has a Pension Tracing Service that can help with this.
Antonia highlighted some other options to track down the pension providers: “Do this through online pension tracking services, old paperwork, and emails.” When you have your pension provider’s details, you’ll need to contact them to start the process of reclaiming your pension pot.
Antonia advised: “Be sure to have your National Insurance number, previous addresses, and the dates you worked for the relevant company to hand. Some free services will do everything for you, including locating lost pots, contacting your old providers, and bringing them all under your control in an easier-to-manage account.”
Once you have the details of all of your forgotten pension pots, one option is to combine them all into one pension pot or scheme. This is also known as collating or consolidating your pension.
This is part that can get a bit more technical as Antonia warned: “You should consider combining them to make them easier to manage in the future, and potentially reduce the number of fees.
“However, be sure to speak with an expert advisor first, as it may not always be the best financial move depending on your circumstances.”
