The number of lost pension pots has soared in the last four years by 75 per cent to 2.8mn with a total value of £26.6bn, according to a report this week highlighting the difficulties savers face keeping track of their holdings.
Ahead of National Pension Tracing Day on October 30, pensions experts are urging savers to redouble efforts to seek unclaimed, dormant and lost pension pots with an average worth of £9,500.
Between mid-2018 and mid-2022, the total value of lost pension pots in the UK has risen by 37.7 per cent, or about £7bn, says the report from the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI), an industry think-tank.
Increasing numbers of workers changing jobs and moving home, including during the pandemic, has contributed to people losing track of their pensions, says the study. So has the success of auto-enrolment, the system introduced a decade ago under which workers aged over 22 and earning £6,240 automatically join a workplace pension scheme unless they opt out.
Young people may be particularly likely to lose track of pensions as they have been especially badly hit by unemployment during the pandemic and because they may be less prone to monitoring their pensions, as they are further from retirement than older workers, says the PPI.
While 10mn new people enrolling in the past decade is widely seen as welcome progress, these savers do not necessarily pay much attention to their pensions. The report says: “People who are enrolled are not required to engage with their pension savings. This has the result of ensuring more people are saving, but also means some people are not aware that they have a pension or who manages it for them.”
The route to finding a lost pension is straightforward for most people, though not necessarily familiar. People looking for a missing pot should find their national insurance number, and the names and addresses of their previous employers. Then they can use the online government’s Pension Tracing Service.
The pensions industry says it is improving tracing methods and tackling the problem of growing numbers of small pension pots, created when workers change jobs more frequently, as now happens. Gail Izat, workplace managing director at Standard Life, said: “No matter how small, if you’ve contributed to a pension in the past, the money’s yours, and we want to help you find it.”
She argues that a way forward is to ease the consolidation of small pensions so pots under a certain size move automatically when a worker changes jobs: “There’s a good rationale for consolidating small pots as the more people have, the greater their interest in the pension.”
The PPI report highlights the development of the pensions dashboard — a government initiative which aims to provide a single point of access for people to see all their pension pots and their state pension, in one place. Implementation is due to start next year.
The study estimated the impact on retirees of lost pots, which amount to about 4.7 per cent of total pension assets. It calculated that a typical household with direct contribution pension assets could gain £446 annually in retirement income if the lost assets were recovered. In reality, some individual gains would be much greater, as the lost pots are not distributed evenly across the population.
The PPI said: “Examining the link between lost pots and income, especially through the lens of living standards, could provide further insight into the dangers of lost pots to individuals as well as the market as a whole.”