How do I trace a pension from an old job?

Auto-enrolment made this problem far larger: a person who has had eight jobs since 2012 may have eight small pots, each with a different provider. Schemes lose touch with members mainly through house moves, and there is no central register that automatically reunites them. The tracing service finds the scheme's contact details; the scheme then has to identify you.

Step by step

1. Build a full employment history first.Every employer, with approximate dates. Your HMRC personal tax account lists employments by year, which is the fastest way to reconstruct it and often surfaces jobs people had forgotten.
2. Search old paperwork for scheme names.Annual benefit statements, joining letters, payslips showing a pension deduction, and P60s. A scheme name or a policy number turns a search into a phone call.
3. Use the Pension Tracing Service.Free, on GOV.UK, and it searches a database of workplace and personal scheme contact details by employer or scheme name. It gives you an address or telephone number; it does not tell you whether you have a pot.
4. Allow for employers that changed name or were taken over.Search the old name and any successor. Where a business was bought, the scheme may have been merged, wound up or transferred to an insurer, and Companies House filings can bridge the gap.
5. Write to each scheme with identifying details.Full name at the time including any former name, date of birth, National Insurance number, employer, and the dates you worked there. National Insurance number plus dates is what usually matches a record.
6. Ask the right questions when you find one.Whether it is defined benefit or defined contribution, the current value or accrued pension, the normal retirement age, the death benefits, and whether any guarantees apply. Record all of it in one place.
7. Consider the Pension Protection Fund route for failed employers.Where a defined benefit employer became insolvent, the scheme may have transferred to the Pension Protection Fund, which has its own member search. Personal pensions from failed providers fall under FSCS arrangements instead.
8. Do not consolidate on a cold call.Pension scams frequently begin with an unsolicited approach offering a free review or a transfer. Cold calling about pensions is banned. Consolidation can be sensible and can also destroy valuable guarantees, particularly with older defined benefit or with-profits policies — that is regulated advice territory.
9. Record what you found so nobody has to do this again.Provider, scheme name, reference, type and normal retirement age, kept with your household papers. GuideHQ's guide on leaving a document pack for an executor covers the format.

Common mistakes

• Paying a tracing firm — The service is free on GOV.UK. Paid firms typically do the same search and charge a percentage or a fee.
• Acting on an unsolicited approach — Pension cold calling is banned, so an unsolicited call about your pension is a warning sign in itself. Check any firm on the FCA register before engaging.

Questions people ask