As many as 250,000 British expat pensioners have failed to claim all of their pension benefits.
The average amount to be collected ranges from £2,000 to £30,000 a year, with tax-free lump sums worth between £500 and £40,000 also unclaimed.
As much as £850 million is tied up in lost pension benefits.
Trustees of UK pension plans have not been able to trace the potential beneficiaries after their relocation abroad, whether they are in Europe, Australia, and the US or further afield in the Far East, the Caribbean, or South Africa.
The data has been collected by FindMyLostPension.com, whose co-founder said: "The problem of lost pensions in the UK is long-standing. It's very difficult and expensive for pension schemes to trace expats and surviving partners who are owed a pension using traditional UK-based tracing methods.”
“The new UK pensions legislation [which came into force in April 2015] means expats over the age of 55 have the opportunity to turn annual pension pots into tax-free lump sums,” he added.
FindMyLostPension.com provides its services for free as does the Government’s Pension Tracing Service (website at gov.uk/find-lost-pension.)
Requests to the Government tracing service rocketed last year to 145,000. It claims success in 87% of cases.
Jill Scott, from the Pension Tracing Service, said: “Independent research suggests that the most common reason for losing track of a pension is when an individual leaves an employer and does not keep them informed of any future changes of address. Estimates suggest that there could be as many as 50 million dormant and lost pension pots by 2050.”
People can also write to The Pension Service 9, Mail Handling Site A, Wolverhampton, WV98 1LU, providing the name of the company or pension scheme to be traced. Additional information, such as dates of employment, type of business or its location, also help.
Alternatively, people could try contacting HM Revenue and Customs' helpline, the Pensions Advisory Service or Unclaimed Asset Register as final options.
