More than £50 million in lost pension savings has been found by Standard Life, in partnership with pension-finding platform Raindrop, in the five months since they launched a new lost pots finding tool.
Using Raindrop’s innovative tracing tool, the pension provider and specialist tech firm have reunited 2,900 Standard Life customers with 3,000 lost pension pots. Lost savings can be found in just two days.
Research from the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) recently revealed that £31.1 billion is still waiting in undiscovered pots across the UK. The majority of working-age adults (81 percent) admit that they don’t know where all their pension savings are, while 19 percent are very concerned that they haven’t saved enough for retirement.
PPI research also showed that the average worker in Britain is likely to have at least 11 jobs in their working lifetime, with this number expected to rise in the future. Employees regularly change jobs or move address without updating their pension provider causing them to lose track of their savings.
When people are reunited with lost savings they are better placed to plan for retirement and could consider consolidating their pensions.
Research from Standard Life shows that despite the potential benefits of pension consolidation, such as reduced admin, improved performance tracking, and cost savings, 73 percent of people with multiple pensions have not consolidated them, and 32 percent are unsure about how to do it.
Dean Butler, managing director for Retail Direct at Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group, said: “Losing track of your pension savings can happen unintentionally, particularly if you change jobs and move to an employer with a different pension provider. The good news is that finding them again doesn’t have to be difficult – the success of our partnership with Raindrop shows how technology can simplify the process, quickly helping people to reconnect with their hard-earned savings. It’s good to see how digital innovation and this partnership is giving people a clearer view of their potential retirement income and greater confidence in their financial future.”
Vivan Shridharani, co-founder and COO at Raindrop, said: “This is just the tip of the iceberg – millions of UK savers have lost track of pension pots and need support taking control of their retirement savings.
“The fact that our tool has tracked down £50m in lost pension savings in just a few months demonstrates the appetite for a simple pension-finding solution – there are billions still sitting in lost pots waiting to be reunited with savers to enable them to plan for a better financial future.”
