There is an estimated 400 million pounds in lost pensions, according to the Pension Tracing service, with the demand for locating missing pensions ever increasing.
Why is the number so high?
The days of one job, a gold watch and one pension are for the history books. It is reported that people now have on average 11 jobs during their working life.
Lifestyles and businesses are changing and this results in people moving jobs. COVID 19 has also made people re think the work / life balance and are looking for new opportunities. With the greater movement of people from job to job it is no wonder how pension policies get forgotten.
The consequence of this, an individual will have numerous pensions, from different providers, across multiple jobs. Years ago, a person would tend to have paper documentation for every pension that they had taken out. Often this paperwork would be filed in a box or in an ‘important documents’ drawer. This would make it easier to track how many pensions a person had during their working lifetime. As time and technology moves on and assets become more digital, it is becoming ever easy to lose track of pensions.
Often people don’t know when they need to update their pension details. Not updating pension details at the right time could end up with pension information being lost. This is backed up by numbers from the campaign National Pension Tracing Day who say only 1 in 25 people update their pension provider on change of address.
For the first time, in 2021 the National Pension Tracing Day was established to help raise awareness of the issue of lost pensions. It is supported by established pension providers such as Standard Life, AEGON, Scottish Widows and Legal and General.
The problem of lost pensions is set to get worse. According to the DWP, automatic enrolment is expected to create up to 50 million lost or dormant pensions by 2050.
How can we help?
Inheritance Data offers the most comprehensive Pension Search available on the market as part of our Financial Asset Search. We have exclusive rights to some of the largest databases in the UK which include Pension and Share records, to aid in uncovering lost pensions that would otherwise be unidentifiable.
Every search includes an Insurance Backed warranty to cover any future liability due to a missed asset at the time of administration. Should any asset be uncovered at a later date, then any additional costs of up to £10,000 will be reimbursed.
Contact our office today for more information in how a Financial Asset Search can benefit your working practice
