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Scottish Widows launching new pension tracing tool, as app reaches 1 million users
Chira Barua
CEO at Scottish Widows
- 3.3m pension pots are lost in the UK, equivalent to £31.1bn sitting unclaimed
- Scottish Widows launching new service via app to help people track down pots
- More than 1 million pension savers are now using the Scottish Widows app
Scottish Widows is launching a new tool in its app this week to help people to track down ‘lost pension pots’ from former employers and, if they choose to do so, merge separate pension plans.
This new feature is arriving in the same week as the app recorded 1 million registrations since launch, and following its redesign in 2024 it has driven over £1.2 billion in in-app pot consolidations.
It’s estimated that there are 3.3 million lost pension pots in the UK, worth a combined total of £31.1 billion1. With people changing employers more than ever during their career – an average of 12 times2 - and the fact that each job comes with a new pot, the problem of unclaimed pots is likely set to worsen without intervention.
Scottish Widows’ New Pension Tracing Tool
To help customers better understand what they have in terms of pension savings, Scottish Widows has partnered with fintech partner The Pension Lab to launch a new service designed to help find any lost or unclaimed pension pots and decide what to do with them via an easy three-step journey in the app.
It takes just a few minutes to complete – once logged into the app, customers enter their national insurance number to start the tracing journey. Users can input other data if known, such as previous employers, who the pension was with and the years it was active, to speed up the process and increase accuracy. The customer then needs to digitally sign a letter of authority to enable The Pension Lab to contact providers on their behalf.
Scottish Widows has also launched a new game this week called ‘Ace the Trace’ to encourage greater engagement with retirement planning. This is the latest in a suite of games designed by the company to make pensions and other financial products easier to understand, and to inspire more people, especially younger audiences, to engage with their pensions.
Chira Barua, CEO at Scottish Widows, said:
“Too many people are going into later life without a clear picture of what they have saved, simply because their pensions are scattered across different jobs and providers. With millions of pots sitting unclaimed across the UK, helping people reconnect with their savings is an important first step in improving retirement outcomes.
“We’ve made pension tracing simple and accessible, to make bringing pensions together in one place as easy as possible so that people can properly understand their future finances and take control of them.
“Reaching one million app users is a clear signal that customers want straightforward, digital ways to manage their money, and we’re continuing to invest in digital and AI tools that remove friction and make pensions easier to engage with. By combining innovation with practical support, we’re helping more people turn good intentions into meaningful action.”
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Notes
2Are your clients entitled to any of the £31.1 billion held in unclaimed pension pots?
About Scottish Widows
Founded in 1815, Scottish Widows is part of Lloyds Banking Group, the UK’s largest digital bank and financial services group. With £280bn in total assets under administration and more than six million customers, Scottish Widows’ award-winning product range includes workplace and individual pensions, annuities, life cover, critical illness and income protection, as well as savings and investment products. Scottish Widows has more than 1.75m digitally registered customers. The Scottish Widows Platform is trusted by more than 18,000 advisers and 5,400 advice firms, which manage the pensions and investments of almost 166,000 clients.