How to find lost pensions, savings or investments

It can be easy to forget to update contact details when you move house or change jobs, which can lead to lost savings, investment accounts or pension pots.

Keeping track of accounts and ensuring your financial details are up to date is important though, so you can access the money when you need it, and make sure it’s working as hard as possible.

Thankfully, the process of finding lost pensions, savings, or investments is relatively straightforward if you have the right information to hand.

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How to find a lost pension

People may lose track of pensions because their provider changes its name, moves its communications online or sends letters to an old address.

The good news is that even if you have lost all the information about your old pension, it is still legally yours and will remain invested in the pension fund – even after you leave a company, if you change jobs.

The bad news is that pension could have been working harder for you while it was lost.

To track down your lost pension, the first step you should take is contacting your past employers to find out who their workplace pension provider is.

Alternatively, you can use the government’s free Pension Tracing Service which helps you find your old or lost pension.

To use the service you will need to input the details of your old employer. You will then be given the name, address and telephone number of the provider who operates their scheme so you can get in touch directly.

After that, you should call or email the provider and directly enquire about your retirement savings. You will usually need your National Insurance number and details of when you worked for the employer to help them track you down.

Once you’ve tracked down your pensions, you may wish to consolidate them into one place. This can save you time, reduce administration and even cut costs.

However, before you consolidate your pension pots, you should check that you won’t give up valuable benefits or incur expensive exit fees by transferring out.

You should check that you won’t miss out on important benefits such as guaranteed annuity rates, which could be lost if the pension is transferred. It also rarely makes sense to transfer out of a final salary pension.

How to find lost cash in ISAs, savings accounts, and Premium Bonds

If you have lost your savings in an ISA or other savings account, you can use the ‘My lost account’ service to search for accounts that have been marked as lost or dormant.

To do this, you will need to sign up to the service with your email address and then input as many of your previous addresses as you can remember and which institution the account was held with.

You’ll also be asked for sort codes, account numbers but it is not essential to provide these. Your request is then sent off to the bank or building society which contacts you directly once they’ve completed a search.

If your bank hasn’t marked the account as lost or dormant, you might not be successful.

If you have lost your Premium Bonds then NS&I has its own tracing tool on its website where you track down your lost money. The tool can find your bonds even if you have lost your bond document or you can’t find your holder’s number.

Lost Premium Bonds continue to be entered into the monthly prize draw, meaning there is a chance you could have an unclaimed prize waiting for you.

How to find lost investments

If you have lost your investments, the first step is to contact the platform with which you held the investments.

The customer service team of your platform should be able to reunite you with your investments, and can update your contact information to make sure they are not lost again.

Trade body the Investment Association also offers a free service via its Unclaimed Assets portal to track down stock-market related investments such as stocks and shares ISAs, investment funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).

If you bought shares directly with a company instead of through a broker, you’ll need to contact the company’s official share registrar.

You’ll need to tell them which company you think you have shares with as they can only carry out a search based on what you have told them.

Be ready to pay some fees here, however, depending on what changes they need to make to your records or if you can’t find your share certificate and need a new one.

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