Farra is a death administration assistant for UK families. Get step-by-step guidance for registering a death, applying for probate, notifying banks, and managing bereavement admin. From essential documents to practical checklists, Farra simplifies estate paperwork and funeral-related tasks so you can focus on what matters.
Work through the person's paperwork for employer and provider names, then use the Pension Tracing Service to turn each name into a scheme address, and write to every scheme. Tell Us Once will notify public sector schemes, but not private or workplace pensions, and the pensions dashboard is not yet open to the public. From April 2027 this becomes a duty rather than good practice: HMRC will expect personal representatives to have looked properly before the inheritance tax account is filed.
People change jobs, move house and forget to tell old schemes. The Pensions Policy Institute's October 2024 briefing put the total at around 3.3 million lost pots holding £31.1 billion, an average of £9,470 each, and the largest average pot (£13,620) sits with the 55 to 75 age group — the people most likely to have died recently. Automatic enrolment since 2012 means anyone who worked for several employers in the last fourteen years may have a small pot with each one.
None of that money is lost to the scheme. It is lost to the family, because nobody knows to ask.
The government's Pension Tracing Service is free. You give it the name of an employer or a pension provider and it returns the current contact details for the scheme — useful when a company has been taken over, renamed or wound up since the person worked there.
Be clear about what it is not. GOV.UK says the service:
It is a directory, not a register of people. Once it has given you an address, you write to the scheme with the death certificate and ask whether the person was a member and what benefits are payable.
Telephone: 0800 731 0175 (from outside the UK +44 (0)191 218 7777), Monday to Friday, 10am to 3pm. Post: The Pension Service, Post Handling Site A, Wolverhampton, WV98 1AF. Or search online at gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details.
When you register the death you will be offered Tell Us Once. It cancels the State Pension and benefits, and it also notifies a fixed list of public sector pension schemes so that payments stop:
GOV.UK is explicit that you must contact personal or workplace pension schemes yourself unless they are on that list. Tell Us Once stops payments; it does not claim anything for you, so a survivor's pension still has to be claimed from the scheme directly. See our guides to the Tell Us Once service and claiming private and workplace pensions.
The pensions dashboard is the long-promised way for people to see all their pensions in one place. Two dates matter and they are not the same:
The dashboard is designed for a living saver to view their own pensions after proving their identity. The programme has not announced any way for an executor to search a deceased person's records, so for now it does not shorten the job described on this page.
For deaths on or after 6 April 2027, most unused pension funds and death benefits count towards the estate for inheritance tax, and the personal representatives — not the scheme — are responsible for reporting and paying the tax. HMRC's technical note says personal representatives must “take reasonable steps to identify any pension schemes from which death benefits may be payable”, by reviewing the deceased's papers, records and bank accounts and consulting relatives, advisers and business partners.
There is a safety valve. HMRC's second technical note (27 August 2026) confirms that personal representatives who have obtained clearance can be discharged from liability for tax on a pension that surfaces later. Its Clearance Checker tool is to be updated to take pensions into account. The steps on this page are the evidence that reasonable steps were taken.
For the rules themselves, see our guide to pensions and inheritance tax from April 2027. If the death was before 6 April 2027, unused pension funds are generally outside the estate for inheritance tax, and a pension found late is money for the beneficiaries rather than a tax exposure.
Write to the scheme with a certified copy of the death certificate, the member or policy number if you have it, and your own details and role. Ask three things: whether the person was a member, what benefits are payable and to whom, and what the fund was worth at the date of death. The date-of-death value goes in the estate valuation whether or not it is taxable — our guide to valuing a pension for probate explains what to record. Who actually receives the money depends on the scheme's rules and any nomination; see pension death benefits and nomination forms.
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