Martin Lewis shares simple way to track down lost pension pots worth up to £104,000
Martin Lewis shared simple steps people can take to track down lost pension pots in the latest episode of Money Show Live. In a pensions special, the consumer champion and a team of retirement experts helped viewers and audience members navigate the sometimes complicated world of private and workplace pensions.
Martin’s key takeaways were not to withdraw from your workplace pension as it will provide crucial financial support in retirement and making sure your expression of wish form is up to date as pensions cannot be added to your will and could see an ex-partner receive a lump sum you didn’t plan on leaving them. But he also focused on ‘lost pensions’, which can happen when people move jobs, warning that some three million are sitting unclaimed in pots across the UK.
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Auto-enrolment means that people over 22 earning at least £10,000 a year are automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme. The scheme started in 2012, so if you’ve moved jobs since then and not kept track of your previous pension, the financial guru’s tips on tracking it down are essential to know.
And if you think it’s not worth the effort, 59-year-old Trudy contacted the show to share how after hearing Martin previously explain how to track down a lost pensions, she did just that and found one worth a whopping £104,000.
Martin told viewers: “Nearly three million pensions are thought to be ‘lost’, often these are worth £10,000 - this is not trivial money. So, try contacting your ex-employer if you know who they are and digging out your paperwork if you can.
“If not there are a number of pension tracing services, an easy one is the Pension Tracing Service tool on GOV.UK, it can list over 200,000 pension schemes.”
Martin continued: “So really what you want to do is list who is my old employer? What was its scheme? Has that scheme changed? Is it someone different? and then once you know, you go and contact them and you try and prove it was you and you dig it out.”
How to track down lost pensions
List of all previous jobs
Make a list of all previous employers. It might be useful to go back through old paperwork such as payslips, P45s, P60s, CVs and job applications.
Online research
If contact information isn’t available for an old employer, they can be tracked using the UK Government’s Pension Tracing Service on GOV.UK here.
Previous Employers
Get in touch with previous employers to find out if they have any details. If they don’t exist anymore contact Companies House here or if a charity, contact the charity register here
Up-to-date statements
Ask for an up-to-date statement, so the value of the pension is known and the correct paperwork is recorded.
If you're keen to catch up with the pensions advice on The Martin Lewis Show Live, you can watch it on the STV Player or ITVX.
