How to find a lost pension from abroad

You worked in another country, then you left. A pension may have stayed behind. Here is how to find it, country by country.

The short answer

Treat each country you worked in as its own search, and inside each country treat the state pension and any workplace pension as two separate searches. Start with that country's free official route; most of them work from abroad, but many sit behind a local digital ID that is hard to get once you have left.

If you want to know first which of your countries are likely to hold something, our free pension check takes about a minute.

Why pensions get left behind when you move

Nobody loses a pension on purpose. You move country, your address changes, the employer is sold or renamed, the scheme gets a new administrator, and the letters stop reaching you. Years later you remember there was "something" from that job in London or Amsterdam or Sydney, and you have no idea who holds it now.

Two things make it harder from abroad:

1. The identity wall. Many national pension portals only let you in with a local digital ID. Those IDs are usually issued to people living in the country, so the free tool exists, but the door is locked once you have gone.
2. Rules with a clock. Some countries have dates that run from the day you left. Miss them and the position changes.

State pension or workplace pension? Search for both

• State pension: built from the years you paid social insurance in that country. One national body keeps the record.
• Workplace pension: a scheme your employer ran or paid into. It sits with a pension fund, insurer or administrator, often one with a different name from your employer.

People often find one and forget the other. Check both for every country.

Country by country: where to start

More detail for each country: United Kingdom, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Spain, United States.

Step by step: finding a lost pension from abroad

1. List every country and every employer. Write down the years, the employer's full name as it was then, the city, and any name you worked under (maiden or married names count).
2. Do the state pension first. It is usually the easier search: one body per country holds the record. Use the route in the table above.
3. Then each workplace pension. Use the country's tracing service or register where there is one. Where there is none, start from the employer.
4. Check the clocks. Look at the "date to know" column for every country you left. Some dates run from the day you left, not from retirement.
5. Write down every answer. Who you asked, when, and what they said. If one body says "no record", that answer is a lead, not an end (see below).

What if the employer was renamed, merged or bought?

This is where most searches stall. The company you worked for in 1995 may now carry a different name, belong to a different group, and pay into a scheme run by an administrator you have never heard of. Three questions get you there:

1. What did the employer become? Company registers record renames, mergers and sales. Search every version of the name you remember, including trading names and the old legal form.
2. Which scheme took over the pension promises? When businesses merge, their schemes are often merged or moved too. One employer can lead to more than one scheme.
3. Who runs that scheme today? A register shows today's administrator. That is not always the firm that ran the scheme in your years, so ask today's administrator who ran it before them and whether old leaver records came across.

When the answer is "no record". It does not always mean nothing is there. It can mean the records sit with an earlier administrator, or that the benefit was paid out when you left. The next step is to ask the employer, or whoever took it over, which scheme you were in and whether a payment was made.

A real case: one employer, three names, two schemes

E. worked in London for Merrill Lynch from 1989 to 1998, then moved back to the Netherlands. He knew he had a UK pension somewhere. He did not know where.

Merrill Lynch appears on the UK pension register under three name variants, and they do not lead to the same place. Two lead to the Bank of America UK Retirement Plan, administered by WTW. The third is archived and leads to the Merrill Lynch (UK) Defined Contribution Plan, administered by Capita. That is the one people miss. So there were two schemes to write to, not one.

E.'s case, and others like it, are on our real cases page.

What to gather before you start

• Every country you worked in, with the years
• Each employer's full name then, its city, and any trading name
• Any name you worked under (maiden, married, a different spelling)
• Your social insurance or tax number from each country (for example a UK National Insurance number or a US Social Security number)
• Payslips, contracts or old scheme letters, even partial ones
• The addresses you lived at in each country
• The date you left each country (it starts some of the clocks above)
• A note of any local digital ID you still hold (DigiD, MyGovID, myGov, Cl@ve)

When the free routes are enough, and when they are not

For many people, the free official route answers the question. The UK is a good example: the International Pension Centre and the Pension Tracing Service both work from abroad, and you may not need anyone's help. Our directory entry for the Pension Tracing Service is Find pension contact details.

It gets harder when a portal needs a local ID you no longer have, when the employer has been renamed or merged, or when you worked in several countries and do not know which ones hold something. That is the gap we work in. We identify which schemes and bodies are likely to hold a pension in your name and give you the route to each one. You sign and send any letters yourself. We give no financial advice.

Start with the free check

Tell us where you worked and roughly when. In about a minute, the free check shows which of your countries are likely to hold a pension, the free official route for each, and any date you need to know.

Run the free pension check

Want to see what a full report looks like first? Here is a sample report.

The PensionHunter Team