YOU could be missing £38,000 from a 'lost pension' pot - here's exactly how to check

When Paul Haresnape was packing up his belongings during a house move, he was surprised to find an old piece of paper that said he had £2,000 in a Barclays personal pension.According to the document, Paul had paid £30 a month into the pension for a year while he worked in a hotel in the late 1980s.Paul, 58, says he had forgotten about the account and assumed it must be worth very little but decided to investigate. An email to Barclays revealed the pension policy had been transferred to a pension provider called ReAssure.When he contacted this group, he was astonished to find that the pot had grown to £25,000 over the decades it had been invested.‘It was a wonderful surprise. I didn’t imagine it would be worth anything like this. It’s not often you get these windfalls.‘It was one of the happiest financial surprises of my life and it was down to a decision I made as a carefree 20 year old.’Paul says the money has been life-changing. It allowed him to leave his job as an educational support worker at a college and move from Cornwall back to Devon to be closer to family and friends. He says he used part of the pension to cover his expenses while searching for a new home and job.‘It’s allowed me to go freelance, which is something I really wanted to do. I’m now a youth and young offender mentor,’ he says. Paul Haresnape, 58, was astonished to find that his old pension pot from the 1980s had grown to £25,000 over the decades it had been invested We’re all building more pension pots than ever before now that we’re automatically enrolled into a new scheme each time we change jobs. But so many lose touch with them over time...Pensions are surprisingly easy to lose track of, especially if you have changed jobs, got married or moved home and failed to tell all your old pension providers.Savers have lost track of 3.3 million pensions worth a staggering £31.1billion in the UK, according to think-tank the Pensions Policy Institute.We’re all building more pension pots than ever before now that we’re automatically enrolled into a new scheme every time we change jobs.Many of us lose touch with old pensions as time goes on. But it’s important to keep tabs on them between now and retirement age.As in Paul’s case, they can be worth significantly more than you expect by retirement age because they will have been invested for a long time and had time to grow.Workers across the UK could be missing tens of thousands of pounds in forgotten pensions, according to analysis by wealth management platform Moneybox.People in Wales are likely to have misplaced four pots – more than anywhere else in the country.There is a disconnect between the number of employers that workers have had during their careers and the number of pension pots they believe they have saved into, according to Moneybox. The gap between the two indicates that many people might have lost touch with workplace pensions they have accumulated over the years.In Wales, people have typically worked for five different employers over the course of their working lives but said they only had one pension on average.The average value of a lost pension pot is £9,470, according to separate research from the Pensions Policy Institute.That means people in Wales could be missing the equivalent of four pension pots, worth up to £37,880. Tanya Jefferies writes: 'There is a disconnect between the number of employers workers have had during their careers and the number of pension pots they believe they have saved into'Other areas where savers are likely to be missing out on large amounts of money are the South East, South West, Scotland, Northern Ireland, North East, East of England and West Midlands. The average gap in these regions is three pension pots, representing an average £28,410 in lost retirement savings.Meanwhile, people in London, the North West, East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber could be missing around two pots each, worth £18,940 on average.Brian Byrnes, of Moneybox, says: ‘Even if each pot seems relatively small, together they can add up to tens of thousands of pounds.‘Tracking down old pensions is one of the simplest actions people can take to improve their long-term financial future.’Former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb, who is now a partner at consultancy LCP and is one of the most knowledgeable pension experts in the country, has written an exhaustive guide to finding old pension pots, which he has shared with Money Mail.His tips are based on his first-hand experiences of hunting down lost pensions for readers over the years. Use Webb’s five key steps to do your own detective work at home.Start with the paperworkThe best place to begin hunting down a lost pension is digging out any official paperwork that you have at home, Webb says.This can include vital details such as policy numbers which make the job of tracing lost pensions much easier. He adds: ‘For this reason it’s important that, even today, people keep all correspondence regarding their pensions rather than throwing it away.’Increasingly people have communications from pension schemes in electronic form, such as emails or links to websites where they can log in. So, it’s also a good idea to carefully make a note of things like the websites of your various pension schemes and your login details so you don’t find yourself locked out of your account. Most correspondence about pensions schemes will be in electronic form, such as email or links to websites, so it is important to make a note of your log in detailsWebb says: ‘If you find these details, for example, if you know the name of the company your pension was invested with, then you should contact it with your plan number, date of birth, your National Insurance number and the date your pension was set up.’But most people will find they don’t have enough details to go down this route, he warns.Find out what happened to your former employerIf you don’t have any old documents and don’t know which company runs your old pension scheme, Webb says the next step is to investigate whether the company you worked for is still trading or if it has changed its name. If you can find contact details for your old employer, you should be able to get hold of information about the pension.He says: ‘Companies House is a good source of information. It is a free online database of all UK-registered businesses, provided by the Government, where you can enter details of the name of a company and get information about what happened to it.’Once you know if the company is still in business and what name it operates under, you can then write to it requesting information about past pension schemes. Go to gov.uk/companies-house.Another way to check if you had an old pension is to look for signs on your National Insurance record that you are one of the millions of workers who saved into what is called a ‘contracted out’ pension scheme.This is when your employer paid reduced National Insurance contributions on your behalf and put the money into its company pension instead, Webb explains. Employees who were contracted out will receive a smaller state pension but a larger sum from their workplace one.HMRC should hold a scheme reference number and scheme name for any period you paid into one of these pensions, he says. That should be enough for you to hand over to a pension provider to claim your pot.Try the Government’s pension tracing serviceIf you can’t find information about your employer using Companies House, Webb recommends using the Government’s Pensions Tracing Service, which can be found at gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details.He says: ‘It’s a kind of glorified telephone directory that can provide contact details for thousands of pension schemes, trustees or administrators. You will need to know the name of the company that you worked for to use it.’ Pension expert Sir Steve Webb recommends using using the Government’s Pensions Tracing Service if you can't find information about your employer through Companies HouseThis service is largely about tracing pension administration firms, which are those that might have been responsible for running your scheme at an old employer.Most workers today have modern money purchase pensions called ‘defined contribution’, in which they have built up a personal pot of money.These pension schemes are managed by a pension provider, not your employer, so your pension should be safe if your employer goes bust. To track it down, you can bypass your former employer and go straight to the pension provider if you know it.You can try to find out whether that business has now been taken on by another company who may hold records for your scheme.However, if the Pension Tracing Service does not have information on your pension, it doesn’t mean it does not exist, Webb says.Your employer may have changed name, gone bust or you may have saved into a type of pension that the service does not track.Note that if you type ‘trace lost pension’ into an online search engine you will be offered a lot of commercial tracing services, he warns.‘Many reputable companies run free services with no obligation to use their services afterwards but take care if you follow any links because some firms might charge you, try to sell you something else, or even be fraudulent.’Gretel is a free service bankrolled by the finance industry which lets you search for pensions plus other bank, investment and insurance accounts in one place.Meanwhile, some pension providers, including Aviva, Aegon and AJ Bell, drum up business by offering to help people find lost pensions for free, then merge and manage all or most of their retirement savings with them.There is typically no obligation to do so, though you should always check the terms and conditions, because there are often good reasons to leave pensions where they are. Many lose track of pensions after moving house but, since the money still belongs to them, tracking down an old pension could make a notable difference to your retirement homeAviva says more than 110,000 people have used its free ‘find and combine’ service and discovered 70,000 pots to date. The average value was around £15,000, although the biggest ever was worth £1million.‘Many people would be delighted to find £20 in an old coat pocket, but we’ve helped customers uncover pensions worth more than £1billion in total,’ says Sam Nixon, a director at Aviva Wealth.‘People often lose track of pensions after changing jobs or moving house but this money still belongs to them so tracking down an old pension could make a significant difference to their retirement income.’Follow the moneyPension funds are generally held and managed separately to your employer. The money is usually entrusted by your employer to a specialist pension provider or insurance company.Track down whether the pension provider was taken over by another business or whether the pension assets may now be held by an insurance company.The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has a helpful A-Z list of different insurance companies and the changes of name they have gone through over the years, which can be found at abi.org.uk/data-and-resources/tools- and-resources/find-lost-pension/.If you had an older ‘defined benefit’ pension, which pays a guaranteed income for life based on the employee’s former salary, and your former employer has gone bust, you should look to a lifeboat scheme called the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).The PPF takes on defined benefit pension schemes for employers that go into liquidation and do not have sufficient funds to honour all their pension commitments.You can check to see if your pension has fallen into the PPF by using the A to Z list of schemes it covers on its website at ppf.co.uk/schemesIf your old pension scheme is covered by the PPF, contact it directly.Use your own networksThink about whether you are in touch with anyone you worked with at your old employer, Webb suggests.He says: ‘If enough time has gone by, a former colleague may be in receipt of a pension from the very scheme your trying to locate. They may be able to give you the right contact details.‘If you are no longer in touch with anyone you used to work with, you may be able to track them down through social media sites.‘For example, although LinkedIn is mainly used by those who are active in employment, people may still have a profile even if they have retired.’Some larger firms will have organisations for their retired employees, he adds. The members of such groups will undoubtedly have a lot of ‘folk knowledge’ about past pension arrangements and could be contacted to point you in the right direction.Read Sir Steve Webb’s full guide to tracking down old pensions at go.lcp.com/lost-pensions.