Believe it or not, there could be money sitting out there with your name on it that you’ve forgotten about.
Billions of pounds are currently tucked away in old bank accounts, forgotten pensions, unclaimed Premium Bonds and dormant savings pots across the UK, and some of it could easily belong to you. Whether you’ve moved house a few times, switched jobs over the years, or simply lost track of an account your parents opened for you as a child, tracking this money down is often far easier than people expect. Here’s where to start looking, and it won’t cost you a penny to check.
Millions of young adults are sitting on forgotten savings.
If you were born between September 2002 and January 2011, there’s a decent chance you have a Child Trust Fund sitting somewhere with your name on it, and you might not even know it exists. These were tax-free savings accounts set up automatically for children during that period, with the government adding at least £250 to get each one started.
Hundreds of thousands of these accounts remain unclaimed, holding an average of around £2,200 each. If you’re not sure who your provider is, HMRC has a simple online tool that can track it down using just your date of birth and National Insurance number, and anyone aged 16 or older can check for themselves.
Old bank and savings accounts add up to hundreds of millions.
Accounts get marked as dormant when a bank hasn’t heard from you in a while, often because you’ve moved house without updating your details, or simply stopped using an old account years ago. Industry figures suggest there are roughly half a million lost bank accounts sitting around in the UK, worth several hundred million pounds combined.
The good news is that this money never actually stops belonging to you, no matter how long an account has sat untouched. A free service called My Lost Account, run jointly by major banks, building societies and National Savings and Investments, lets you search for old accounts simply by filling in your personal details online.
Forgotten pensions are often worth more than people expect.
Switching jobs a few times over the years is normal, but it also means plenty of people end up with several workplace pensions scattered across different providers, some of which get forgotten. Estimates suggest millions of pensions across the UK remain unclaimed, with the average lost pot worth well into the thousands.
Tracking one down doesn’t need to be complicated, either. The government’s free Pension Tracing Service searches through hundreds of thousands of pension schemes to find contact details for old providers, and you can use it whether you remember the company name or just the name of a former employer.
Millions of pounds in Premium Bond prizes are sitting unclaimed.
Premium Bonds are one of the most popular ways to save in the UK, with millions of people holding them in hopes of winning a cash prize each month. But because prizes sometimes get sent to old addresses or simply go unclaimed, there are currently millions of pounds in prizes just sitting there waiting to be collected.
There’s no time limit on claiming a Premium Bond prize, either, so even a win from decades ago can still be claimed today. If you think you might have old bonds you’ve lost track of, the same My Lost Account service can help track them down, and NS&I’s online prize checker will tell you instantly whether any of your bonds have won.
Old shares and investments can also be reunited with their rightful owners.
If you’ve ever bought shares, inherited some from a relative, or put money into an investment fund years ago, it’s surprisingly easy to lose track of where that money ended up. Billions of pounds sit unclaimed in old investments and pensions across the country, often because providers no longer have up-to-date contact details.
The Investment Association runs a free portal specifically for tracking down lost unit trusts, while the Association of Investment Companies can help locate old investment trusts if you have any paperwork or details to hand. If you know the name of the company you hold shares in, contacting their share registrar directly is usually the quickest route to sorting things out.
You can claim money left behind by a relative who has passed away.
If a close relative has passed away without claiming their pension or other financial assets, you might actually be entitled to that money yourself, depending on the type of pension or account involved. This applies to things like Premium Bonds too, which can remain in the monthly prize draw for a full year after someone’s death.
Anyone acting as an executor or holding power of attorney can use the same tracing services to search on behalf of someone who has died. It’s always worth checking, since many families simply aren’t aware that money like this is still sitting there waiting to be claimed.
A single free search can cover almost everything at once.
Rather than searching separately for every type of account, a newer free service called Gretel can search across banks, pensions, and investments all in one go, checking against your name and previous addresses. It’s free to use and keeps searching every couple of weeks in case new information becomes available later.
Whichever route you choose, it’s worth remembering that you should never need to pay a company to track this money down for you. Every single tracing service mentioned here is free to use, so there’s no reason to hand over a fee to anyone claiming they can do it for you instead.
