Unclaimed money from deceased relatives UK: where to search

Where should you start looking for unclaimed money?

Start with paperwork, because it beats every database. Providers can only match a search if you give them a name, a date of birth and an address the person actually used. Work through these before running a single online search.

• Post from the last 18 months: statements, tax vouchers, policy renewals and prize letters each name a provider.

• Bank statements going back two years: standing orders, dividend credits and interest payments are the fingerprints of accounts held elsewhere.

• The email inbox: search it for "statement", "policy", "dividend" and "pension".

• Old addresses: list every one, because tracing services match on address history.

• Previous names: a maiden name is the commonest reason a search returns nothing.

• Employers: list every one, including short jobs, because each may mean a separate pension.

Keep that list. Every service below asks for the same six things.

How do you find a dormant bank account?

Use My Lost Account, the free service run jointly by UK Finance, the Building Societies Association and NS&I. You complete one application, select the providers to be searched, and each replies directly. My Lost Account states you will receive a response within three months.

It covers bank, building society and NS&I products the provider has classified as lost, and it matches defunct brand names such as Abbey National, Bradford and Bingley and Northern Rock. It does not cover pensions, investment platforms, insurance or overseas accounts. Our guide to My Lost Account sets out the gaps in full.

A dormant bank account is not the same as an inactive one. If the account was in recent use the bank still holds live contact details, so approach it directly, as covered in how to notify a bank after someone dies.

Run Gretel alongside it. Gretel is a free service that searches lost and dormant accounts, pensions, investments and shares on name, date of birth and address. It repeats the search as new providers join, and can be used for someone who has died.

How do you trace a lost pension?

Use the free Pension Tracing Service at gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details, run by the Department for Work and Pensions. Search by employer name for a workplace pension, or by provider name for a personal pension, and the scheme administrator's contact details come back immediately.

The service tells you where to write and nothing more. It cannot confirm a pension exists or what it is worth, so the real work is the follow-up letter. The phone number and the public sector schemes it misses are in our guide to the Pension Tracing Service.

Search every employer, not just the memorable ones. A pension can exist from a job held for two years in the 1980s, and it is often the largest asset an estate turns up. Then what happens to a pension when someone dies explains who it gets paid to.

How do you check NS&I savings and Premium Bonds?

Contact NS&I directly, because NS&I sits outside Tell Us Once and no government notification reaches it when a death is registered. Its tracing service is free, there is no time limit on tracing NS&I savings, and it has reunited more than 380,000 people with over £890 million.

The unclaimed prize figures are why this is worth running even on a small estate. NS&I reported 2,598,139 unclaimed Premium Bond prizes worth £103,270,175, and stated there is no time limit to claiming them (NS&I).

Two separate things need checking, and people usually do only one. The holding is claimed through the bereavement form, covered in NS&I bereavement claims. Old prizes are checked separately with the NS&I prize checker, and the draw rules after a death are in what happens to premium bonds when someone dies.

Is there a deadline for claiming dormant assets?

No. Dormant assets remain the property of their owners and can be reclaimed at any time, and that right passes to beneficiaries as well as owners (GOV.UK, Dormant Assets Periodic Review). This is the most reassuring fact in this guide, and most families do not know it.

The Dormant Assets Scheme moves money from accounts untouched for years to Reclaim Fund Ltd, which passes the surplus to good causes. The transfer does not extinguish anyone's entitlement. Reclaim Fund Ltd states that owners and their beneficiaries can, at any time, reclaim the amount that would have been due to them.

The numbers show both sides of the scheme.

• Transferred into the scheme by 31 March 2025: £2.16 billion.

• Reclaimed by owners and beneficiaries: £183.3 million across 210,000 accounts.

• Released to good causes: over £1.1 billion to The National Lottery Community Fund.

• Asset types covered: banking, insurance and pensions, investments and securities, after the Dormant Assets Act 2022.

You do not claim from Reclaim Fund Ltd. You claim through the original provider, which is then reimbursed, so the practical route is still My Lost Account or a direct approach.

How do you check the unclaimed estates list?

Download the free unclaimed estates list published on GOV.UK and search it for the surname. It is maintained by the Bona Vacantia division of the Government Legal Department, and covers estates in England and Wales that passed to the Crown because the person died with no will and no entitled relative.

This search answers a different question from the others. The rest of this guide is about money an estate is entitled to but has not found. The unclaimed estates list is about a whole estate nobody ever claimed.

The list is not UK-wide. Scotland handles heirless estates as ultimus haeres through the King's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, and Northern Ireland through the Crown Solicitor's Office.

How do you trace a lost life insurance policy?

Contact the insurer directly if you have a policy number or an insurer name, and work backwards from bank statements if you do not. A regular monthly payment to an insurance company, however small, is usually a live policy or one that lapsed recently.

There is no single free government register of life policies, which is the honest answer most articles avoid. Three routes work: a direct approach to any insurer named in the paperwork, a Gretel search, and a check of whether an employer scheme included cover.

Old industrial branch policies are worth chasing specifically. These were small door-to-door life policies sold in large numbers up to the 1980s, and the companies that sold them have almost all been absorbed by larger insurers.

How do you find lost shares and unclaimed dividends?

Contact the company's registrar. Three registrars handle most UK listed shareholdings between them: Computershare, Equiniti and MUFG Corporate Markets. If you know the company, its investor relations page names its registrar, and the registrar can search by name and address at no charge.

Dividend cheques that were never banked are the more common find. Unpaid dividends sit with the registrar and can usually be reissued, and old paper certificates from privatisations and building society conversions surface in the same drawer as the statements.

There is a real deadline here, which is why this search should not be left until last. Under the model articles of association, a dividend unclaimed 12 years after it became due ceases to remain owing by the company (legislation.gov.uk). Most listed companies use articles based on that model. The shares are not forfeited, but 12 years of dividends can be.

How do you find an unclaimed Child Trust Fund?

Ask HMRC, using its free tool on GOV.UK to find a Child Trust Fund provider. HMRC usually replies within three weeks of an online request, and you can ask without knowing the National Insurance number (GOV.UK).

Child Trust Funds were opened for children born between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011, so the holders are adults now. Over 750,000 matured accounts remain unclaimed, worth £1.5 billion to £1.6 billion, at an average of around £2,200 each (Which?).

A Child Trust Fund belongs to the young person, not to the parent or grandparent who paid into it, so it is not part of a deceased parent's estate. Where the holder has died, the money does form part of their estate.

Which unclaimed money searches are free and which ones charge?

Seven of the nine routes here are free. Being clear about which is which is the most useful thing anyone can tell you, because the paid alternatives search the same records you can search yourself.

• My Lost Account: free, run by UK Finance, the Building Societies Association and NS&I.

• Pension Tracing Service: free, run by the Department for Work and Pensions.

• NS&I tracing service and prize checker: free, with no time limit.

• Gretel: free, including searches for someone who has died.

• Unclaimed estates list: free, published as a CSV file on GOV.UK.

• HMRC Child Trust Fund finder: free, with a reply usually inside three weeks.

• Share registrars: free where you can name the company.

• Legacy Trail: free to do a basic search and notify, but you pay a small fee for a deep search

• Heir hunter and probate research firms: paid, normally a percentage of what you recover.

• Commercial asset search services: paid, and sold mainly to solicitors.

The Unclaimed Assets Register deserves a correction, because many UK guides still list it. It was owned by Experian, charged £25 for each search, and closed on 31 August 2022. The uar.co.uk domain no longer resolves, so anything recommending it is quoting a service that has not existed for four years.

Be equally sceptical of paid lookalikes. The Pension Tracing Service has a commercial namesake charging for the same lookup, and My Lost Account warns against paying anyone to run the search it runs for nothing.

What do you do with money you find?

Anything recovered belongs to the estate and counts towards its value for probate and inheritance tax, which is covered in how to value an estate for probate. Search before you distribute, not after. Late arrivals are common, because a My Lost Account result can take three months, and accounts found after probate explains what an executor does then.