Do you know where all your pensions are held? Many people have lost track – here’s how to find old pots

Two out of five people know the whereabouts of all their private and workplace pensions, while the rest are hazy on the details or aren’t saving for retirement.

Some 16 per cent are in the dark about where any of their pensions are held while 20 per cent have kept track of some of them.

Among the adults surveyed by Aegon, 24 per cent said they don’t have any of their own pensions, although many might not remember old retirement funds, and might be building up rights to a state pension, currently worth £12,550 at the full annual rate.

Now everyone is auto enrolled into a new pension each time they change job they are all building up ever more pots, and many lose touch with them as time goes on.

Job switching, auto enrolment with every move, and people’s tendency to lose pension information and not update schemes with contact details are all behind the rise in orphaned pots.

Savers have lost track of 3.3 million pensions worth £31.1billion altogether, according to an estimate from think-tank the Pensions Policy Institute.

Pension firm Aegon, which runs a service called Mylo to help locate lost workplace pension pots, says its survey highlights the challenge many people face in keeping track of retirement savings.

It also found many people don’t understand communications they receive about pensions from their providers.

While 72 per cent of pension savers say they open their annual pension statement and 69 per cent that they read it, only 55 per cent say it helps them understand whether they are saving enough for retirement.

Aegon found that 30 per cent of pension savers never check where their pension is invested, but 21 per cent check up on their pot at least monthly.

The company surveyed 2,000 adults, weighted to be representative of the UK population, in mid-August.

Nick Roy, commercial director of workplace at Aegon, says: ‘You can’t plan effectively for retirement if you’ve lost track of your pension savings.

‘For many people, the challenge isn’t a lack of interest in planning for the future, it’s keeping on top of pension pots accumulated across different jobs and different stages of their working life.

‘As people move between employers and build up multiple pension pots, it’s easy to lose track of what you’ve already saved.’

This is Money has a guide to tracing lost pensions, which includes valuable tips from our pensions columnist Steve Webb that are gleaned from his many years helping to reunite our readers with their pots.

Once you have found your pensions, a tidying up exercise can reduce fees and paperwork and bring new retirement investing options.

But merging pensions is not always advisable because you can risk losing valuable benefits – we look at the traps to avoid and what you need to know about combining pension pots here.

When you find old funds, you should register your current details with the provider and ensure that you keep them updated with your new address whenever you move in future.

It is also important to keep old pension paperwork, which will include important reference numbers and values, and/or securely store a list of websites and log-in details for your family after you die.

This is because pensions will start to be included in estates for inheritance tax calculations from next April.

Executors and administrators of estates will need to identify and pass on to HMRC the details of whatever is left in funds held by the deceased.

Even when no inheritance tax is due, a deceased person’s finances still need to be examined and information must often be submitted anyway to prove that to the taxman.

For the pensions industry, there is an incentive to help unite people with lost pots. There are administration costs involved in maintaining data on them, and attempting to keep people updated using defunct contact details, when some might be very small.

So, old employer schemes and pension firms might be more helpful than you imagine.

Pension dashboards that allow people to see all their savings in one place are pending and will also become a useful search tool in future, but there is no launch date for public access yet.