BILLIONS of pounds are sitting unclaimed and 'mislaid' in pension pots – and you could be entitled to some of it.

Punter Southall Aspire, a major financial planning and retirement savings business, is encouraging the public to check if they could be owed part of a £19.4 billion pension pot.

Mislaid pensions can occur for a number of reasons, including moving house and forgetting to tell a pension company about a change in address.

Punter Southall Aspire’s director of communications, Johanna Nelson-Vanner, said: “When those billions of ‘lost’ pensions are whittled down, it means something like one in 30 people could be reunited with money they didn’t know they had.

“So if I tell 30 people and they tell 30 more and so on, I might help someone find theirs. That’s what this campaign is about. We’ve also been supporting employers and trustees to spread the word with ready-to-go communication toolkits.”

Finding out if you are eligible for pension savings doesn’t have to be difficult.

To make the task easier, Punter Southall Aspire has launched a website which includes tips on how to find old pension pots.

These tips include retracing old jobs, searching paperwork, checking each pension pot to ensure contact details are correct and researching any gaps in pensions over your lifetime.

Here are some tips on how to hunt down your old pension pots:

  • Retrace your steps

Fish out your old CVs, or head down memory lane, and list all the places you’ve worked. Did you have a pension at any of them?

  • Search your papers

Have a good hunt through your paperwork for old pension papers – and check you’ve got a pension statement for each workplace you listed. Are there any gaps?

Angela Kirkwood, pensions expert at the Money and Pensions Service said: “Each month, more than 400 people call our government-backed MoneyHelper phoneline to track down their pensions and our impartial team talks them through the steps they need to take, free of charge.

“Our research suggests fewer than half the adults in the UK (45 per cent) say they understand enough to be able to plan their retirement. Tracing forgotten savings is just one way they can prepare for what lies ahead.”

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