Pension guide
How do I find old or lost pensions?
Changing jobs, moving home or a pension provider changing its name can make an old pension surprisingly easy to lose track of. The pension does not disappear — but you may need to reconnect with the scheme before you can understand what you have.
Step by step
Start by rebuilding your employment and pension history.
List previous employers
Write down every employer you can remember, including approximate dates. Even relatively short periods of employment can be worth checking.
Check old paperwork and emails
Look for annual pension statements, policy numbers, provider names, payslips and correspondence from scheme administrators.
Contact previous employers
If you know the employer but not the pension provider, ask who administered the workplace pension during the period you worked there.
Trace the scheme
If contact details are missing or out of date, use the Government's Pension Tracing Service.
Government service
What does the Pension Tracing Service actually do?
The GOV.UK service can provide contact details for a workplace or personal pension scheme where you know the name of an employer or pension provider.
The Pension Tracing Service cannot confirm that you have a pension with a scheme and cannot tell you its value. You use the details it provides to contact the scheme or provider directly.
The service can be used online, and GOV.UK also provides telephone and postal routes.
Proving the pension is yours
Give the provider enough information to match its records.
MoneyHelper says providers may ask for information such as:
National Insurance number
This can help the provider identify historic membership records.
Previous names
Include any names you used when the pension was established.
Previous addresses
Old records may still contain an address you left many years ago.
Employment dates
Approximate joining and leaving dates can help identify the relevant workplace scheme.
Once it is found
Do more than simply update the address.
Ask the provider for an up-to-date statement and enough information to understand the pension properly.
Current value or benefits
For defined contribution pensions, obtain the current fund value. For defined benefit schemes, request details of the promised benefits.
Charges
Understand the costs applying to the pension and investments.
Investment funds
Check how a defined contribution pension is currently invested and whether the strategy still makes sense for your time horizon.
Special features
Ask specifically about guarantees, protected pension ages, protected tax-free cash and other benefits that may not be obvious from an annual statement.
What next?
Finding an old pension does not mean you should automatically transfer it.
Bringing pensions together can make administration easier, but a transfer can also mean losing guarantees, protected benefits, favourable charges or other valuable scheme features.
That sequence avoids turning a useful tracing exercise into an unnecessary transfer decision.
Once all your pensions are identified, they can be considered together as part of your wider retirement plan.
Pension review
Found several old pensions and not sure what to do with them?
A pension review can bring the information together, identify important guarantees or protections and assess whether keeping, combining or restructuring arrangements fits your retirement plan.
Book a conversationThis guide is for general information only and is not personal financial or tax advice. Pension benefits and scheme rules vary. Content checked against current GOV.UK Pension Tracing Service and MoneyHelper guidance on 15 September 2026.