How to find a deceased person's lost pensions

The GOV.UK Pension Tracing Service can find contact details for a deceased person's pension schemes, though not whether a pension exists or its value.

If you are sorting out the affairs of someone who has died and think there may be pensions nobody has mentioned, the Pension Tracing Service is one route, alongside their paperwork and their former employers. None of it has to be done quickly or all at once.

Should something turn up that the family wants to talk over, a relative may send the form on this page with their contact details, and an FCA-authorised adviser rings, without charge, about whatever pensions emerge.

Registering the death: Tell Us Once and the State Pension

Registering the death is often the first official step, and it is also where the State Pension is dealt with, through GOV.UK's Tell Us Once service.

Tell Us Once lets you "report a death to most government organisations in one go". The registrar explains it when you register the death, and it must be used within 28 days of getting your unique reference number. It is not available if the person was "living in Northern Ireland when they died" or "living abroad permanently when they died"; in that case, "You must let the relevant organisations know about the death yourself."

If all of this is a lot to take in, Cruse Bereavement Support's helpline is 0808 808 1677 (as listed on its website in September 2026), and the same government guide lists other organisations that offer someone to talk to.

One of the organisations it notifies is DWP, "to cancel benefits and entitlements, for example Universal Credit or State Pension", and HMRC and DWP then contact you about the person's tax, benefits and entitlements. It also asks some public sector schemes to cancel future pension payments, among them the Civil Service Pension Scheme, the Local Government Pension Schemes and NHS Pensions for staff in England and Wales. For those schemes you will need the person's National Insurance number, and for any use of the service, the name and contact details of the executor or administrator. Personal and workplace pensions outside that list are not told: you contact them yourself.

A surviving husband, wife or civil partner may be due something too: "You might be able to inherit an extra payment on top of your new State Pension if you're widowed." Conditions apply, and nothing can be inherited by someone who remarries or forms a new civil partnership before reaching State Pension age. The UK State Pension guide explains how it is built, and pension overpayments after death covers money paid after the date of death.

Searching for schemes nobody has mentioned

The same GOV.UK guide points to the tracing route for the person who died: "If you need help finding contact details for the person's pension schemes, you can search for pension contact details." That search is the Pension Tracing Service, run by the Department for Work and Pensions. You give it the name of an employer or a pension provider and it gives back contact details for the scheme. It cannot say whether the person had a pension there or what it is worth; only the scheme can tell you that.

So it helps to have names. MoneyHelper's guidance (archived copy of 12 July 2025, the latest available) suggests going through the person's paperwork for personal or workplace pensions and, where they were employed and the provider is unknown, asking the employer whether there was a current workplace pension.

If you are unsure what to give the service as someone acting for the person who died, it also takes requests by phone on 0800 731 0175 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 3pm) or by post, and you can ask there what it needs from you. That guide calls it "a free, government-backed service", and DWP described it as free when the current website launched in May 2016; more on cost in is the Pension Tracing Service free? Tracing your own old pots is covered in finding a lost pension, and the pensions dashboard is a separate service with its own page.

Telling each scheme and asking what is payable

For each scheme you find, contact the administrator or provider to tell them of the death. MoneyHelper's guidance (archived copies of 10 and 12 July 2025) notes that an employer may already have done so, but suggests checking. Where the person was already drawing the pension, it says to tell the scheme as soon as possible, because payments received after the death might have to be paid back.

Each scheme tells you what paperwork it needs; the death certificate, and possibly evidence of the beneficiary's identity, are the examples MoneyHelper gives. Ask, too, whether anyone is entitled to pension benefits or a cash lump sum: most providers have discretion over who receives the money. What can be paid, and how it is taxed, is covered in how pension death benefits work and tax on an inherited pension.

Replies from several schemes can arrive together. Going through them with an FCA-authorised adviser costs nothing to arrange: send the form on this page, or put your questions to each scheme direct.

If a firm offers to do the tracing for a fee

The GOV.UK search costs nothing, but it only hands you contact details; the writing and chasing are left to you. If a firm offers to do that work for a fee, ask what exactly it would do beyond the free search and what it would charge. A firm that approaches you unprompted is a different case. The FCA calls a cold call about your pension illegal and probably a scam, and its advice is to hang up; suspected scams can be reported to it on 0800 111 6768. The pension scams guide covers the warning signs.

Questions people ask about tracing a deceased person's pensions

Can the Pension Tracing Service search for someone who has died?

GOV.UK's guide to what to do after a death points to it for finding the person's pension schemes, and MoneyHelper's July 2025 guidance suggested it where no trace of a pension turns up. You need an employer's or provider's name to search.

Does Tell Us Once tell private pension schemes?

No. It tells DWP, which covers the State Pension, and contacts a list of public sector schemes. Personal and workplace pensions outside that list are for you to contact.

Is there a time limit?

Tell Us Once must be used within 28 days of getting your reference number. For a pension already being paid, tell the scheme as soon as possible because of possible repayments; ask each scheme about its own timings.

What if they lived in Northern Ireland?

Tell Us Once cannot be used, so each organisation, including DWP for any State Pension, needs telling directly.

Your next step

Start with their paperwork and former employers, use the Pension Tracing Service when a name is all you have, register the death through Tell Us Once if it is open to you, and write to each scheme you find.

For help making sense of the scheme letters, an FCA-authorised adviser will ring an executor or relative who sends the form on this page; neither pays for that call. If moving an inherited pension ever comes up, how to transfer a pension sets out the steps.

Sources, accessed 20 October 2026: GOV.UK, Find pension contact details; GOV.UK, What to do after someone dies (Tell Us Once; bereavement help and support); GOV.UK, The new State Pension: inheriting; DWP, New Pension Tracing Service website launched (9 May 2016); MoneyHelper, three guides on pensions after a death (archived copies of 10 and 12 July 2025); Cruse Bereavement Support (archived copy of 28 September 2026); FCA, Pension scams (last updated 19/01/2026).