Almost £27bn is sitting in lost or forgotten pension pots, leading to calls for the government to bring forward guidance so providers can prepare for the delayed pensions dashboard.
This Sunday (October 29) is National Pensions Tracing Day, which encourages people to check whether they have savings they did not know about - it is estimated one in 20 people in the UK could be in this situation.
The awareness day was created by Punter Southall and is supported by pensions firms.
It claims there is an estimated £26.6bn in lost pensions made up of around 2.8mn forgotten pots.
Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon, said the firm is calling on the government to deliver the guidance needed by pension providers to help deliver the long-promised UK pension dashboard to help with this issue.
She said: "The pension dashboard will enable people to see all their pensions online, securely, in one place. Once up and running, people should never again lose track of their old pensions.”
Smith added that she wanted lost pensions to “become a thing of the past”.
While Claire Trott, divisional director for retirement and holistic planning at St. James’s Place, said only 62 per cent of Brits have all the paperwork they need to trace all their financial products.
She advised making a list of all the places you have worked, and the dates, and using the gov.uk search facility to track down missing pensions.
Trott added: “Ideally, we don’t want to be in the situation where we need to trace our pensions in the first place, but as we know, life gets in the way and many of us often lose track of our old workplace pensions as time goes on.
“Most providers will need to know your national insurance number, date of birth and probably the address they hold for you – which may be different to your current address or even the one you were living at when you left the scheme – so it’s important to have as many details to hand as possible.”
Royal London’s consumer finance specialist, Sarah Pennells, warned that anyone who has had more than one job could miss out on cash in retirement due to lost pensions.
She added: “If there’s a lost pension with your name on it, you could be thousands of pounds better off when you retire.”
Punter Southall’s Alan Morahan has brought competing pensions businesses together to back the effort to reunite people with pots they may have lost contact with through moving house or changing jobs.
Morahan said: “We all lead busy lives but it’s easier than ever to uncover what you may have forgotten about, which could be worth thousands of pounds. In a few clicks or a phone call, you could be better off than you think.
“Hard times mean making every penny a prisoner so if you’re 55 or over, this could be very welcome or even a lifeline. If you’re younger, isn’t it a good feeling to know that you have more put aside than you thought and you can build on it?”
