Could you have £959,729 in lost pensions?

There are 3.3 million lost pension pots, according to the Pensions Policy Institute, as people have moved jobs, lost paperwork or forgotten their pension existed. But what if you had 11 missing pension pots you could track down, or a pension worth £959,729 sitting there waiting to be found?

That’s what some people discovered when using our pension finding service. We delved into the data on people who had used the service to track down their lost accounts, and it proved lucrative work for many.

On average, people found two lost pensions. But one in 10 people found four or more missing pensions that they could then combine into one account. Some customers were luckier, with two people tracking down 11 lost pensions each.

Interestingly, on average people switch jobs around 11 times over the course of a lifetime, according to some estimates, meaning they could have 12 pension pots over their entire career.

Each lost pension pot in our research was worth just over £10,000 on average, but as most people found more than one pension, they went away with almost £18,000 in the total value of the lost pensions they had rediscovered.

Understandably, the older someone is the higher the average value of their pension, as it will have likely had more time to be invested and grow. The average person in their 30s found pensions worth just under £9,500, while those in their 40s netted £23,000 on average, rising to an average pot size of £33,400 for those over the age of 70.

There’s the potential to track down much larger pots. The biggest single pension pot that someone discovered was worth £656,329. And the biggest total find for one person, split among multiple pots, was £959,729. That pension alone could allow you to take an income of £48,000 each year without touching the initial pot, assuming 5% growth after charges.

If you want to track down your lost pensions, find out more information on our pension finding service.