£65 Billion in Unclaimed Pensions: Martin Lewis Urges 3.3 Million Britons to Check Now

Somewhere in the financial system, a forgotten pension pot could be sitting quietly with your name on it. More than £65 billion ($87 billion) in pension savings has slipped out of reach across the UK, with the average lost pot worth roughly £19,500 ($26,000), according to MoneySavingExpert, the consumer site founded by Martin Lewis.

Lewis returned to the subject on Good Morning Britain on 17 June, walking viewers through the free ways to recover money tied up in dormant accounts. 'Could you have big sums of money in lost assets such as savings accounts or pensions?' the programme posted alongside the clip.

That £65 billion is one of the larger estimates in circulation. The Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) puts the figure lower, at around £31.1 billion ($42 billion), spread across almost 3.3 million lost or unclaimed pots. Either way, the average forgotten pension runs to thousands of pounds. It sits close to £9,500 ($12,700) on the PPI's count, rising to roughly £13,620 ($18,300) for savers aged 55 to 75.

How £65 Billion in Pensions Went Missing

Most lost pensions are not stolen or spent. They are simply forgotten. A typical worker now changes jobs far more often than previous generations, picking up a fresh workplace pension each time. Add auto-enrolment, which quietly signs employees up to a scheme, and the thread becomes easy to lose.

A pot is classed as lost when the provider can no longer reach the saver. Often that follows a house move, a change of name, or a provider merging into another company without the customer noticing. The paperwork stops arriving, the scheme fades from memory, and the money sits untouched for years. The smallest pots, built up over short spells with an employer, tend to be the first to slip off the radar.

Four Free Ways to Trace a Lost Pension

Lewis stressed that none of this should cost a penny. Digging out old payslips or pension statements is the obvious starting point, since they name the provider and the scheme. Where the paperwork is long gone, he pointed viewers towards the government's Pension Tracing Service on gov.uk, which holds a vast database of schemes but relies on you remembering past employers.

For bank accounts, savings, NS&I holdings, and some investments, the free mylostaccount.org.uk tool casts a wider net. For anyone still drawing a blank, Lewis highlighted Gretel, a fintech firm launched in 2022. It runs a soft search on your credit file, which leaves no mark on your score, then hunts across pensions, shares, dormant accounts, and child trust funds. Once registered, it keeps checking every couple of weeks and flags fresh matches without you lifting a finger.

Why So Many Pensions Stay Lost

The pile of unclaimed money has grown, not shrunk. The PPI reckons the number of lost pots has roughly doubled over six years, with their combined value up by close to £12 billion since 2018.

Part of the reason so much sits idle is that few people go looking. Research by Gretel found that while around 44% of UK adults suspect they hold a lost or dormant account, just 13% have ever tried to track one down. That is starting to change. Roughly 834,000 people used the Pension Tracing Service during 2025, according to Department for Work and Pensions figures. Calls to the service rose by more than half in the year to September, analysis by accountancy firm Lubbock Fine found.

A long-promised pensions dashboard, designed to show all of a person's pots in one place, will not ease the hunt any time soon. Pension schemes face a deadline of 31 October 2026 to connect to the system, but the DWP does not expect the tool to reach the public until the 2027/28 financial year at the earliest.

Until then, the onus stays with savers. With the cost of living still biting, an hour spent checking the free services could add thousands of pounds to a retirement that many Britons fear will fall short. The money is sitting there. Claiming it means going to look.