Martin Lewis is urging anyone who has moved home or started a new job to check if they are owed £10,000. Speaking on this week's Martin Lewis Money Show Live on ITV, the MoneySavingExpert.com founder pointed people in the direction of potentially lost pensions. One viewer who followed his advice to investigate uncovered £45,000 'sitting there'.
Billions in lost pensions
Lewis said: 'There's over £30bn, 30,000 million pounds of pensions, are thought to be lost. An average of just under £10,000 each.' He explained that people lose track of pensions because they do not update their contact details after moving house, changing name due to marriage, or switching jobs. Pension providers may also merge or be renamed, making it easy to lose track.
How to find lost pensions for free
Lewis advised viewers to start by digging out old paperwork and contacting former employers. If that fails, use the Pension Tracing Service on gov.uk, which contains 200,000 pension schemes. This service is particularly useful if the old pension scheme no longer exists, as it can identify who has taken on its assets. Once you get the details, contact the pension firm to reconnect, providing ID.
If you still cannot find your pension, Lewis recommends gretle.co.uk. This free service performs a soft search on your credit files to match old addresses with lost assets like bank accounts, shares, and pensions. It is funded by financial firms and rechecks every 14 days after sign-up.
Lewis concluded: 'Especially those of you in your 40s, 50s, 60s who've worked at lots of different firms, this is massively worth doing. You might have a £45,000 pension out there. In fact, had one guy's had over £100,000 of pension he found. It is worth a check.'
