Only two-in-five UK adults know where all their private and workplace pensions are held, according to research published by Mylo at Aegon ahead of Pension Awareness Day.
The findings, commissioned by Aegon to support the rollout of its Mylo pension tracking service, found that 36% of UK adults do not know where all their pensions are held. Within that group, 20% know where some are held and one-in-six, or 16%, say they have no idea where any of their pensions are. A further 24% say they have no pension at all.
For advisers, the data points to a gap that sits upstream of conventional retirement planning conversations. Before clients can assess adequacy or make consolidation decisions, many first need to establish what they have and where it is held, a challenge that compounds across longer working lives with multiple employers.
Pension communications are reaching savers, but understanding is not keeping pace with engagement. More than seven-in-ten pension savers, 72%, say they open their annual statement and 69% say they read it. Yet only 55% say the statement helps them understand whether they are saving enough for retirement. Nearly half are engaging with communications that are not answering the question they most need answered.
Investment awareness is similarly limited. Almost a third of pension savers, 30%, never check where their pension is invested, while only 21% do so at least monthly.
Nick Roy, commercial director of workplace at Aegon, said: "You can't plan effectively for retirement if you've lost track of your pension savings. Yet only two-in-five adults know where all their pensions are held. For many people, the challenge isn't a lack of interest in planning for the future; it's keeping on top of pension pots accumulated across different jobs and different stages of their working life.
"As people move between employers and build up multiple pension pots, it's easy to lose track of what you've already saved. Before people can decide whether they're saving enough for retirement, they first need to understand what retirement savings they have and where they are held.
"As we continue the rollout of Mylo, our ambition is simple: to help people move from wondering where their pensions are and whether they're doing enough, to feeling more in control of their retirement savings and more confident about taking the next step."
