Reclaim forgotten cash

The amount of money hidden away in old investments and pensions is estimated to be more than £45 billion. If you think some of this could be yours, use the services below to track it down...

• Pensions (employer and personal schemes, NOT state pension)
  
  Always try to keep in touch with your pension schemes, as it may affect your ability to claim pension benefits when you retire if you lose contact. As a first step, look through old paperwork or contact the HR department at old employers to see if they can help find details of previous workplace pension schemes you might have been part of.
  
  If that doesn't get you anywhere, try the simple, free tool from the Pension Tracing Service. It has details of more than 200,000 different pension schemes, and will help you find an up-to-date contact address for the scheme you're looking for.
  
  Remember, if a close relative has died without taking their pension, you might be eligible for that pension fund's cash too. The amount will depend on the type of pension they had.
  
  
• Unit trusts
  
  For help in tracing unit trusts, you can use the Investment Association's Unclaimed Assets Portal. You can also contact the Investment Association on 020 7831 0898 or by emailing enquiries@theia.org.
  
  
• Investment trusts
  
  The Association of Investment Companies advise people to fill in their details on the My Lost Account website to recover lost investment trust funds.
  
  
• Insurance policies
  
  If you're trying to trace an insurance policy in your name, it's best to contact the company first. If you can't contact the provider, it may be that it's changed its name – this list of insurers from The Association of British Insurers can help with name changes (it's titled pension providers, but many also provide insurance policies). If that hasn't helped, it's best to then use a catch-all service (see below).
  

Catch-all services

• Gretel – This free catch-all service launched in April 2022. Because Gretel is still fairly new, some big financial institutions are yet to sign up, so you may not get a match straightaway. But it will continue to search for lost accounts on your behalf, and will let you know if your details match a lost account with a company that joins in future.
  
  To start a search, just fill in your name, address and date of birth. Gretel will then do a soft search on your credit report (don't worry – this won't affect your credit score and lenders can't see it) to check your identity and match you with previous addresses where you may have accounts registered.
  
  You can also now use Gretel to search for lost assets on behalf of vulnerable or deceased loved ones.
  
  Gretel says it uses bank level security to keep your data safe, and won't sell any of your data to third parties – it only uses it to try and reconnect you to any lost accounts.
  
  We don't have much feedback on Gretel yet, so if you do decide to try it, please share your experience in the MSE Forum.