Here’s how to find lost pensions, savings and other valuable assets

What lengths would you go to in order to be reunited with lost cash? 

James Howells, from South Wales, is prepared to spend £11million digging up a landfill site to find his missing fortune. The IT engineer threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins ten years ago. The hoard is now worth around £150million, so it is understandable that he is prepared to spend millions to be reunited with the key to his cyber treasure. 

The good news for the rest of us is that finding lost assets – forgotten pensions, old bank accounts and investments – is much easier than digging through a decade’s worth of landfill. While you won’t have misplaced £150 million, there’s a good chance you’ve got a few thousand pounds you’ve forgotten about. 

Hidden treasure: An estimated £50billion is sitting in forgotten accounts in the UK

An estimated £50billion is sitting in forgotten accounts in the UK. The majority – around £37billion – is locked away in pensions. The rest is spread across investments, savings, bank accounts, insurance policies and premium bonds. 

‘With the cost of living crisis, the though of getting this dormant, lost and unclaimed money back into the hands of the consumer is more important than ever before,’ says Duncan Stevens, chief executive of Gretel, a new website designed to help you find your cash. 

Rediscovering lost assets is a straightforward process, but you should act fast if you want to use the simplest approach as the Unclaimed Assets Register closes later this month. Credit reference company Experian, which has operated it for 20 years, says it is no longer a key part of its business. 

The closure is a big blow for people wanting a one-stop way to find assets. In particular, it badly affects executors of estates who often face a battle to track down all of a deceased person’s accounts and assets so as to pass them on to beneficiaries. For £25, you can use the register to hunt through 4.5million records from around 80 financial providers. 

However, the register has limitations. It only searches companies linked to Experian, so it isn’t an exhaustive hunt. If you want to be certain you haven’t got a lost asset anywhere, you need to put in a little bit of legwork. Thankfully, you do not need to pay anything to search for forgotten accounts. 

Here’s how to be reunited with all your different assets without spending a penny.

Track down income for retirement 

Your most likely lost asset is a pension. On average, the value of an unclaimed pension fund is around £23,000. 

Helen Morrissey, senior analyst at wealth manager Hargreaves Lansdown, says it is not surprising that pensions are often mislaid. She says: ‘People are likely to change jobs several times over the course of their career and have a pension with each employer they have worked for.’ 

She adds: ‘Over time, it’s easy to lose track of these pensions. Someone may move house and forget to update their contact details. This means they could risk losing out on valuable retirement income which could amount to thousands of pounds.’ 

Reuniting yourself with a lost pension is straightforward. The Government provides a free pension tracing service at gov.uk/findpension-contact-details. 

This uses your employment history or the name of your original pension provider to give you up-to-date contact details for companies that now oversee them. You then need to contact the companies to discover if they have a pension in your name. 

Morrissey says: ‘Making sure you update your contact details with your various pensions each time you move will help you keep on top of matters. Having a full picture of your pension wealth means you can plan ahead with more confidence and make better informed retirement decisions.’

Find old savings and investment accounts

To find forgotten savings, you can use service My Lost Account. Operated by UK Finance, the Building Societies Association and NS&I, this service searches most banks and building societies to check if they have accounts in your name. You just need to provide your name – and any previous names – and any former home addresses. 

If the search turns up any forgotten Premium Bonds, go to the NS&I website to check if you have any unclaimed prizes. There is an estimated £74million of unclaimed Premium Bond prizes. You could have anything from £25 to £100,000 waiting for you. 

If on the hunt for lost investments, you can use the Investment Association’s Unclaimed Assets Portal while the Association of Investment Companies can help you find lost money held in investment trusts. Also, if you think you held shares in an individual company, contact the outfit directly.

Finding an old life insurance policy is more difficult. You can’t tap your details in anywhere to see if there is a policy in your name. Instead, an option is the Policy Detective website which has the latest contact details for the company you think your policy is with. Next, you must contact the company directly to see if your policy is still in force. 

With the Unclaimed Assets Register closing, consider tapping your full name and address history into Gretel, a free service that aims to replicate what the register was doing. It will hunt through its database for matches.

It is a new platform and is still adding financial providers, so even if you find nothing on the first go, check again in the future when new accounts are added. 

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk