Martin Lewis has pointed a pension saver to a free tool that can locate lost pension pots without listing every former employer. The consumer advocate replied "Try Gretel" after a social media user complained that pension-tracing websites asked for a full employment history.
The questioner had asked: "Can you kindly help me with a problem if you can? I want to find my old pensions but all sites are asking for all my employers." They described the process as "long-winded" and wondered whether there was an easier way to check for lost pensions using just their National Insurance number.
How Gretel works
Gretel is a free fintech tool that helps reconnect people with lost accounts, including pensions, bank accounts, investments and trust funds. Users provide their name, current address and date of birth. The service shows past addresses linked to the name for confirmation, then searches for assets such as pension pots.
This approach avoids the need to dig through paperwork from multiple employers. The government's Pension Tracing Service, by contrast, requires details of the pension provider or old employer to perform a search.
Pension Wise recommendation
Mr Lewis also recommended a separate service on his BBC podcast. He said: "If you don't know what you're doing with pensions, get in touch with Pension Wise, which is a sort of a semi-governmental agency to give you free guidance on pensions. You can just call them up or go online."
Pension Wise appointments can cover when pension pots can be accessed, the ways to withdraw funds, and tax implications. He has previously shared examples of people finding pots worth £120,000 by checking.
Age rules to note
Private pensions can currently be accessed from age 55. That will rise to 57 in April 2028, the same date the state pension age reaches 67. The state pension access age is increasing gradually from 66 to 67 in monthly increments between April 2026 and April 2028.
