There is an estimated £89 billion sitting in lost and unclaimed UK financial assets — forgotten bank accounts, pension pots, insurance policies, share certificates and Child Trust Funds, spread across roughly 28 million accounts. Statistically, some of it belongs to people who would tell you, confidently, that they know exactly what they own.
When people calculate their net worth, the errors are almost never in the maths. They're in the inventory. Below are the seven categories most likely to be missing from yours, roughly in order of how much they're likely to be worth.
1. Old workplace pensions
The biggest omission by value. The Pensions Policy Institute estimates 3.3 million pension pots are lost — disconnected from owners who've moved house or changed jobs — worth £31.1 billion in total. The average lost pot holds £9,470, rising to £13,620 for people aged 55–75.
The mechanics are mundane: auto-enrolment since 2012 means every job creates a pension, the average person changes jobs around eleven times, and providers lose track of you after a couple of address changes. In 2025 alone, 834,000 people used the government's Pension Tracing Service to hunt for theirs.
If you cannot name every employer you've had and the pension provider attached to each, assume there's a gap. Our guide to finding and organising old pensions covers the tracing process step by step.
2. Dormant bank and savings accounts
Accounts go dormant when banks lose contact with you — usually after a house move — and stop sending statements. The money remains yours indefinitely, even if the account has been transferred into the government's Dormant Assets Scheme; you retain a permanent right to reclaim. Old student accounts, accounts opened for a savings rate and abandoned, and accounts from banks that have since merged or rebranded are the usual culprits.
3. Premium Bonds and NS&I products
NS&I holds a particularly large pool of unclaimed money, partly because Premium Bonds are so often bought for people — by grandparents, for children — and forgotten by the time the child is an adult. Prizes also go unclaimed when winners have moved address. There's no time limit on claims, and NS&I runs a free tracing service. If anyone might ever have bought bonds in your name, it's worth a check.
4. Old shareholdings and paper share certificates
Demutualisation windfalls from the 1980s and 90s (Abbey National, Halifax, Norwich Union and others), employee share schemes from former jobs, and paper certificates inherited or bought decades ago. Shares don't stop existing because the certificate is in a loft — and many have accumulated years of unclaimed dividends alongside.
5. Life insurance and investment policies
Whole-of-life policies, endowments and investment bonds taken out decades ago — often alongside a mortgage — frequently outlive the paperwork. An estimated 2.5 million life insurance policies are unclaimed in the UK. If a policy was sold by a company that has since been bought, renamed or merged (very common in UK insurance), the trail goes cold without anyone deciding to abandon anything.
6. Child Trust Funds
Every child born between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011 received one, with a government contribution. An estimated £2.2 billion sits in CTFs that have been forgotten — many belonging to young adults who have no idea the account exists, because it was opened by HMRC on their behalf when parents didn't choose a provider. If you (or your children) were born in that window, check.
7. Everything that exists only in one person's head
The quietest category. An account isn't lost only when you forget it — it's effectively lost if nobody else could find it. Plenty of households have a complete financial picture that exists solely in one partner's memory, with no record anywhere of what's held where. That's how today's organised finances become tomorrow's entry in the £89 billion.
The fix isn't complicated: a single, current record of what you hold and where — accounts, pensions, policies, providers — that's kept up to date and accessible to the people who'd need it.
Recount before you benchmark
If any of these categories rang a bell, your net worth is higher than the number you had in mind — recover what's findable, then recalculate properly with the calculator. And once the inventory is complete, the way to keep it that way is to track it: one record, reviewed regularly, with nothing left to memory.