More than a million retirement savers have lost track of workplace pensions worth more than £3 billion, according to government figures.
By 2050, the research reckons more than savers will have abandoned 50 million dormant pension accounts holding £750 billion.
Meanwhile, the number of retirement savers trying to find their lost savings has hit a four year high.
The Pension Tracing Service, the government agency in charge of helping people find their retirement cash, assisted nearly 150,000 people seeking lost funds this year.
The figure has soared by 83% since 2010, with just under 11,800 a month on average asking the service to search for pension cash, compared with almost 6,500 a month four years ago.
Misleading web sites
Surprisingly, the BBC endorses a financial services web site offering a free pension tracing service that is not the government agency set up to do the job.
The web site Pension Tracing Service is designed to collect leads for independent financial advisors by masquerading as the official service. The service is free but IFAs really want to follow up finding a pension by offering paid-for services.
The site does point out it is not the official site – providing web users read far enough down the page.
The official web site – https://www.gov.uk/find-lost-pension – has an online form and contact details for the Pension Tracing Service that allows retirement savers to search for their funds for free. Learn all about finding your lost pension here.
Carolyn Saunders, London head of pensions at Pinsent Masons said: “People don’t work for the same company all their lives anymore, so it’s easy to forget about pension contributions made decades ago.
Pot follows saver laws
“Over time companies close or merge and if the retirement saver does not tell them of any change of address, they cannot keep up with them to pass on any pensions.
“The rising number of calls for help to the pension tracing service shows more people are aware of pension and retirement finance problems and are doing what they can to marshal their resources.”
Saunders also explained that when new government rules allowing workers to move their pensions when they move jobs, the problem of losing track of pension funds should subside over time.
“The majority of requests to trace a pension end up reuniting the worker with their money, but the rising number of requests show that this is a problem and the government was right to act to implement pot follows savers laws,” she said.
