Three million missing UK pension pots worth £18.7bn
The Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) reports that roughly three million pension pots in Britain are currently untraced, amounting to an estimated £18.7bn in value, with each pot averaging about £6,220.
Its publication Lost Pensions: The scale of the challenge, produced with support from the Money and Pensions Service (Maps), applied a refreshed methodology and achieved the broadest market reach to date, encompassing approximately 75 per cent of workplace defined-contribution (DC) schemes. Consequently, the results cannot be directly aligned with earlier studies and instead present a new minimum gauge of the magnitude and worth of missing pension pots.
Age-group analysis indicates that 81.88 per cent of the unclaimed pots, about 2.5 million, belonged to individuals younger than 55, accounting for roughly £12.9bn of the lost capital. The PPI attributes this pattern to factors such as the prohibition on accessing pensions before age 55, the rollout of automatic enrolment, shifting employment trends and greater job mobility among younger workers.
Conversely, approximately 8,000 pots, representing 0.26 per cent of the total, were linked to people aged over 75. This senior cohort exhibited the highest share of missing pots within its age band, with about 13 per cent of their pensions classified as lost.
The study also uncovered a gender gap: women’s average lost pension balance was more than 20 per cent lower than that of men. On average, the missing pot for a male saver was valued at £6,830, while a female saver’s average shortfall stood at £5,370.
For the first time, the investigation incorporated data on defined-benefit (DB) schemes. Although it could not quantify the total volume of lost DB rights, the findings suggest that such omissions occur across various plan types and may be sufficient to influence members’ retirement outcomes.
The MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard, under development by Maps and slated for release in financial year 2027/28, aims to address this issue. The tool will consolidate pension information in a single view and highlight accounts that have fallen out of reach, representing a key element of broader efforts to ensure people possess the retirement savings they require and to simplify long-term financial planning.
