Lost Pensions: How to find your old pension pots and what to do next

With an estimated £31.1 billion currently tied up in lost, inactive, or unclaimed pension pots across the UK, the task of finding out whether any of it belongs to you could be about to get easier.

For any of you that have gone through a retirement planning process, you will be aware that a good starting point is to review any former or existing pension schemes that you hold. For some, finding this information can be much easier than others.

You may have a pension from an employer you worked for 20 years ago? Maybe you moved house and stopped receiving statements from an old provider? Or you simply lost track of a pension through other changing circumstances. The stats show that you are certainly not alone.

The new Pensions Dashboard could now make finding those lost pensions easier.

The long-awaited dashboard is designed to help people see information about their different pension pots all in one place.

The concept is straightforward. Rather than contacting multiple pension providers individually, the dashboard is intended to allow people to search digitally for their pension information.

Chris Curry, Industry Principal for the Pensions Dashboards Programme, said:

“Research shows us that people find it tricky to engage with their pensions, especially with an increasing number of jobs across a person’s lifetime leading to multiple pensions at retirement. Pensions dashboards will make this much simpler – a single overview of all your pensions together. They will be an invaluable tool for making informed decisions about saving for later life, having better conversations with pension providers and schemes and rediscovering those pensions you may have forgotten.”

In addition to the new dashboard, a recent industry campaign, Billions 4 Millions which launched in January, has reported reconnecting customers with more than £2.5 billion of lost and forgotten financial products during the first half of 2026 alone. These included pensions, investments, savings and protection policies – with pensions accounting for around 80% of successful reconnections, highlighting just how many people may have lost track of their retirement savings.

The average value of a successful reconnection during the first half of 2026 was reported to be around £31,000 (source: Billions for Millions), although the campaign reported that some of the products being reconnected were worth considerably more.

Their introduction could therefore make it much easier for people to establish what pension savings they have accumulated throughout their working lives and then make it easier to plan for retirement when aligned with reputable advice.

Joe Carey, financial planner comments

“As a financial planner, I regularly speak to clients who have accumulated several pension pots throughout their working lives. Sometimes they know exactly where those pensions are and what they want to do with them. However, more often, we are tasked with searching for and collating that information, then reporting on what is possible or achievable with their pots.”

“Discovering four or five old schemes is therefore clearly a great bonus, but you will then be faced with a new set of questions on what to do with them thereafter. Should you leave them where they are? Promotions can often encourage you to combine them? When can you access each pension? etc”

The reality is that a pension can remain invested for decades after you leave an employer. That means an arrangement you opened when you were 20 could still be sitting there when you are 50 or 60, and that could prove to be such a wasted opportunity.

Naturally, we would encourage everyone to keep up to date records of their schemes and review them regularly, but with the introduction of these new additional solutions, finding details of any old plans you may have has just become easier.

Please do let us know if you have any successes – we would be delighted to hear of your experiences.

Sources:

Brits missing £31.1bn in unclaimed pension pots | Pensions UK

https://www.pensionsdashboardsprogramme.org.uk/

https://www.billions4millions.com/