I Found a Pension I Completely Forgot About, Here Is How

I want to tell you about the time I discovered a meaningful pension pot I had completely forgotten existed. This is a true story about how easy it is to lose track of your own money, and how I found my forgotten pension.

The Job I Barely Remember

In 2009, I took a job at a mid-sized marketing agency in London. I was 28. The pay was decent, the office was in Soho, and the work was interesting enough. I stayed for just over two years before moving on to a bigger agency.

When I left, someone from HR mentioned something about my pension. I vaguely remember them saying I could leave it where it was or transfer it to my new employer's scheme. I was busy packing up my desk and thinking about my new job. I said I would deal with it later.

I never did.

The Years In Between

Over the next 15 years, I changed jobs three more times. I moved house twice. I got married. I lived abroad for four years, two in Dubai and two in Singapore. Through all of that, I assumed my pensions were being handled. My current employer had a scheme, and I was paying into it. That was enough, right?

What I did not realise was that every job change had created a separate pension pot. And the agency in Soho, the one I barely remembered, had been paying into a workplace pension scheme that I had completely lost contact with.

The Discovery

I heard about PensionHunter through a colleague who had used it after returning from Australia. She had found two forgotten pots, one from a temping agency and one from a short contract role. She had not realised either still existed.

I thought, why not? I did the pension probability checker first. It took about a minute. My score came back at 82%, very high probability of having at least one forgotten pension.

So I paid the $799 for a multi-country search (I had worked in the UK, UAE and Singapore).

What Happened Next

Within hours I could see progress on my case dashboard. Searches were running across all three countries. The UK registry search started checking the Pension Tracing Service. Employer tracing began tracking down my old employers.

Day 3: The Employer Tracer flagged that my old Soho agency had been acquired by a larger group in 2016. The pension scheme had been transferred from one provider to another.

Day 7: A match was confirmed, a workplace pension held by Aviva, originally set up by my old agency, now under the acquiring group's scheme. The dashboard showed the highlight: POSSIBLE MATCH IDENTIFIED.

Day 14: I received my full Pension Identification Report. There it was, a pension pot in my name sitting with Aviva, going to an address I had not lived at since 2013.

The Feeling

Finding a forgotten pension is surreal. It is not like winning money, it is like discovering you have been richer than you thought for years. The money was always mine. I earned it. My employer contributed to it. But I had absolutely no idea it existed.

The report included Aviva's contact details and a pre-prepared enquiry letter. I contacted them directly, verified my identity, and updated my address. The pot is now consolidated with my current pension.

What I Learned

Three things:

First, if you have ever changed jobs, you probably have a forgotten pension. Auto-enrolment means every UK employer since 2012 has been paying into a scheme for you. Every single one.

Second, pension providers do not come looking for you. They send letters to your last known address. If you have moved, those letters go nowhere. Your money sits there indefinitely.

Third, the cost of not checking is enormous. That pot had been growing through investment returns for years. If I had left it another decade without knowing about it, the growth would have continued, but I would have had no say in how it was invested, and I might never have found it at all.

What You Should Do

Check your pension probability, free. It takes 60 seconds. If your score is above 50%, you very likely have at least one forgotten pot.

Then register free. It costs $99 for Country Pension Identification Report, $499 for Search (expert-led) or $799 for Global (multi-country, expert-led). Full refund if we find nothing material. If something is found, well, you might be richer than you thought.

I found my forgotten pension. You might too.

Download our free guide to finding forgotten pensions abroad for more information.

*This article is based on a real client experience. Details have been anonymised. PensionHunter is a research and administrative assistance service. Not regulated by the FCA. Not financial advice.*

At PensionHunter, building the World's Trusted Pension Identification Platform, we help people across 41 countries find pension records they had forgotten about.