Find unclaimed assets Pensions and premium bonds

Pensions and premium bonds

Use the Pension Tracing Service to track down lost pensions

How to find lost pensions

If you've lost touch with a pension, use the Pension Tracing Service operated by the Department for Work and Pensions. It has access to over 200,000 occupational and personal schemes and is very easy to use. In 2008, it processed nearly 48,000 requests.

All you need to know is the name of your previous employer or pension scheme – although if you can give more information, it will improve your chances of finding a current address for the scheme. 

What the tracing service can't do is tell you if you actually have any pension benefit with the particular scheme you're looking for. It simply gives you a contact address for the administrators of the scheme and then it's up to you to contact them directly.

Find lost premium bonds

With over £30 million (Feb 2009) in unclaimed premium bond prizes, it's worth checking that you haven't missed out on a prize. There's no time limit for claiming. NS&I attempts to contact all winners, but can only do so if they have their current contact details.

If you know your holder's number, you can check using the online premium bonds prize checker. If you don't have any documentation, but believe you have some premium bonds, then you can use a tracing request form, available on the NS&I website. You can use the same form to check whether a deceased investor had any premium bonds. Alternatively, you can use mylostaccount.org.uk to do a search.

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