In short. The government’s Pension Tracing Service gives you the contact details for an old workplace or personal pension scheme, free of charge. It will not tell you whether you have a pension there or what it is worth — only the provider can do that. Before you start, gather a list of your old employers with rough dates, your National Insurance number, and any previous names and addresses. Pensions dashboards, which will eventually show your pots in one place, are not available to the public yet.
Lost pensions are common enough to have been measured. The Pensions Policy Institute, whose survey covers a majority of the workplace defined contribution market, estimated 3.3 million lost pots holding £31.1 billion, from fieldwork in September 2024. It counts a pot as lost when the provider can no longer contact the person who owns it, which is a clue both to how this happens and to how you fix it.
Why do pensions go missing?
Pensions usually go missing because the paperwork stops arriving, not because the money has gone. A pension you paid into is generally still held in your name by the scheme, whether or not anyone can currently find you.
Four things break the link. Changing jobs is the main one: automatic enrolment was phased in from October 2012 and completed in February 2018, so a working life since then tends to leave a trail of small pots rather than one large one. Moving house is the second — the provider writes to the address it holds, the letter comes back marked gone away, and the statements stop. Providers themselves change, merging into other companies and trading under new names. And schemes wind up, or transfer elsewhere, when an employer restructures or stops trading.
The Association of British Insurers, whose members run much of this, asks a small favour on the house-moving point. If a letter arrives for someone who used to live at your address, write “this person no longer lives here” on the envelope and post it back. It costs nothing, and it could help somebody reconnect with their savings.
What do you need before you start?
A list of employers, and enough detail for a provider to match you to a record:
- Every employer you have had — including short stints, which are exactly the ones people forget.
- Rough dates — roughly when you started and left each job, and when you think the pension was set up.
- Your National Insurance number — providers use it to match you to a record.
- Previous names and addresses — relevant if you have married, or moved several times.
- Any old paperwork — most schemes send an annual statement, and an old one names the scheme and its administrator.
Be slow to cross an employer off. Under automatic enrolment plenty of people were put into a scheme without registering it at the time, so “I don’t remember having a pension there” is not the same as not having one. The safer test is whether you know your contributions were refunded when you left. MoneyHelper’s guide sets out when a refund might have happened: if you left before April 1975; if you left from April 1975 to April 1988 having worked there less than five years, or being under 26 when you left; or if you left since April 1988 having worked there less than two years.
That last one needs a caveat the guide does not carry, and it matters. Short service refunds were abolished for trust-based defined contribution schemes from 1 October 2015. If you joined one on or after that date, a refund was only possible by leaving within your first 30 days. Defined benefit schemes kept the two-year rule, and personal pensions never offered refunds at all. So an eighteen-month job in 2019 with a workplace pension is worth a check rather than a line through it.
How does the Pension Tracing Service work?
It is a free service run by the Department for Work and Pensions, and it gives you a pension scheme’s contact details. You search at gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details, or you can call 0800 731 0175 between 10am and 3pm, Monday to Friday. There is a Welsh version, a British Sign Language video relay service, and a postal route.
To search, you need the name of an employer or a pension provider. You can also look up someone else’s scheme if you have their permission. If you are sorting out somebody’s estate, that route is not open to you, and MoneyHelper’s guide to what happens to a pension when someone dies is the better starting point.
The limit is the part most people miss, and it is worth being precise about. The service tells you who to contact. It does not tell you whether you have a pension with that scheme, and it does not tell you what any pension is worth. Those answers come from the provider, once you have got in touch.
Two other routes help when the trail has gone cold. If a provider has merged or changed its name, the Association of British Insurers publishes a list of who now administers old policies. If an employer became insolvent and ran a defined benefit scheme — the type that pays an income based on your salary and service — the Pension Protection Fund publishes a list of the schemes it is assessing, along with those that have transferred to it or been withdrawn. Two things to know about that list: it covers insolvency cases only, so it will not help with a personal pension or a scheme whose employer is still trading, and schemes covered by the Financial Assistance Scheme are listed separately. If a scheme did transfer to the Pension Protection Fund, what you receive is compensation for the pension you lost rather than the scheme’s original promise, and the level depends on factors including your age and the year you retired.
Your State Pension sits outside all of this. It is not held by a provider and the tracing service does not cover it, so check it separately with the government’s State Pension forecast.
One warning belongs here. If someone contacts you out of the blue about your pension, the Financial Conduct Authority’s position is blunt: an unexpected pension cold call is illegal and probably a scam, and unexpected offers of a free pension review are likely to be scams too. You can report cold calls to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The distinguishing feature is that they approached you. Whoever you end up dealing with, and whether they came to you or you went to them, you can check them for nothing on the FCA’s public Financial Services Register at register.fca.org.uk — search the firm’s name or reference number, and check that the name, permissions and address match. That applies to us as much as to anyone else; Plan Smart’s firm reference number is in the footer of this page.
What should you ask once you find the provider?
Ask the questions the tracing service cannot answer. It is worth writing them down before you call:
- Do you hold a record for me? — have your National Insurance number, employment dates and any previous names and addresses ready, because those are the details a provider is likely to ask for.
- What type of pension is it? — a defined contribution pot, or a defined benefit income based on salary and service. The two behave very differently.
- What is it worth? — a current value for a pot, or the income it would pay and from what age for defined benefit.
- What charges come out of it?
- Does it carry anything I would give up by moving it? — some older policies come with guaranteed annuity rates, protected tax-free cash or a protected early retirement age.
- Is my address right, and have you got my expression of wish? — the form recording who you would like to receive the pension if you died. Most schemes and providers keep the final decision themselves and treat the form as a statement of your wishes, which is worth knowing when you fill one in.
Before you hang up, check they have your current contact details. That is what keeps the annual statements coming, and it is what stops the same pension going missing again.
What happens to the pensions you find?
Often, nothing has to happen. A defined contribution pot left where it is stays yours and stays invested; a defined benefit entitlement stays yours too, and pays out at the scheme’s retirement age. Updating your address, keeping the paperwork somewhere you will find it, and checking your expression of wish may be all the situation calls for. Leaving a pot alone is not free of consequence, though — charges carry on coming out of it, and on a small pot a flat charge takes a larger proportional bite.
Bringing several pensions together is the other option, and it is a decision with weight on both sides. Older policies sometimes carry guarantees that disappear on transfer, some schemes charge to leave, and a pension your current employer is still paying into is a different case again. Against that, one pension is easier to keep track of than six, and charges differ between schemes. It is worth understanding exactly what you would be moving, and what it would cost you to move it, before deciding whether to move anything at all. Pension values move with the investments behind them either way, and can fall as well as rise.
One change may tidy up part of the problem automatically. Under the Pension Schemes Act 2026, small defined contribution pots of £1,000 or less sitting in automatic enrolment default arrangements, with no contributions paid in for at least 12 months, should be transferred to an authorised consolidator. Regulations are expected to set out which pots are in scope and any exemptions, the criteria for becoming an authorised consolidator, and how the transfers will work. The Pensions Regulator has not put a date on it.
Where do pensions dashboards actually stand?
Not in public use yet. Pensions dashboards will let you see your pensions in one place, including your State Pension, and the industry is part-way through connecting to them.
The numbers, as at the Pensions Dashboards Programme’s July 2026 update: nearly 1,500 providers and schemes have connected, covering more than 70 million workplace and private pension records — around 85% of those in scope — with tens of millions of State Pension records alongside them. The legal deadline for the rest is 31 October 2026.
The first dashboard for the public will be the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard, run by the Money and Pensions Service. On current plans it is expected to be available to the public in the 2027/28 financial year. The programme’s advisory group describes that as a not-before date rather than a launch date, and a further update on timing is due around the October connection deadline. Dashboards run by private firms are intended to follow.
Two things are worth knowing before you wait for it. The rules cover personal pension providers subject to Financial Conduct Authority rules and occupational schemes with 100 or more relevant members, so smaller schemes sit outside them. And pensions already being paid out are excluded, which matters if you have started taking any of yours. A dashboard will show a great deal; it will not show everything. Until it arrives, tracing is how you find an old pension.
Where to get help
Tracing is something you can do yourself, and the official routes cost nothing. If you would like to talk it through without paying for it, MoneyHelper offers free pension guidance on 0800 011 3797, Monday to Friday. Pension Wise, which is impartial and backed by government, gives free appointments on defined contribution pensions if you are 50 or over, and in a few other circumstances if you are under 50.
Some of what you turn up is harder to judge on your own: several pots and no clear view of what they add up to, or old policies whose charges and terms are hard to compare. If you would like to go through it with an adviser, you can speak to an adviser at Plan Smart, and our pensions page sets out how that works.
A defined benefit pension, or any policy with guarantees attached, is a separate matter. Moving one is a regulated decision in its own right, and if the transfer value is more than £30,000 the FCA says you must by law take advice from a regulated adviser — one whose firm shows “advising on pension transfers and opt-outs” on the Financial Services Register. Plan Smart does not offer that advice.