How to find a lost life insurance policy (yours or a relative's) (UK)

1 September 2026 · Inherit Vault

Life insurers aren't sitting on the money hoping you'll forget. They mostly just don't know where you live. Someone moves house, the paperwork goes in a bin bag, the premiums stop leaving an account nobody checks, and a perfectly valid policy quietly goes missing.

Look for the paperwork, then give up on it fast

Have a proper hunt for the policy document, an annual statement or a renewal letter. Loft, filing cabinet, the drawer with the takeaway menus. If it turns up, you're done in one phone call. If it hasn't turned up within an hour, stop. The paper is rarely where the answer is, and there are far better places to go next.

Bank statements are the strongest lead you've got

This is the Association of British Insurers' own advice, and it works. Premiums leave a bank or credit card account every month, usually as a direct debit or standing order with the insurer's name on it. Pull twelve months of statements and read every small recurring payment. A £14.30 debit to a name you half recognise is a live policy.

The company on the certificate may not exist any more

Insurance has consolidated relentlessly. Commercial Union and General Accident became CGU, CGU and Norwich Union became CGNU, and CGNU was renamed Aviva. So a 1980s certificate naming a firm nobody's heard of isn't a dead end, it's a breadcrumb. Search the old brand plus "now part of", work out who ended up with the book of business, and ring them. Whoever bought the business also bought the liability to pay.

Use Gretel, and don't pay anyone

Gretel is a free service that searches for lost life policies, dormant bank accounts, pensions, investments and Child Trust Funds using your name and date of birth. It costs nothing, it's open to UK residents over 18, and it keeps searching as more providers join, so a blank result today can turn into a match in six months. Worth knowing: the old Unclaimed Assets Register run by Experian closed on 31 August 2022, and it charged around £25 a search. Any site still selling you access to "the register" is selling you something that shut four years ago.

Check the employer, not just the person

Death in service cover is the most commonly missed policy in Britain, because the person who died never bought it and often never mentioned it. It's usually two to four times salary, held through an employer's group life scheme, and it pays out whether or not there's a personal policy on top. Ask the last employer's HR or payroll team directly. If the employer has gone, the free Pension Tracing Service at gov.uk gives you contact details for the scheme, the same route that tracks down a lost pension. It's worth reading up on everything else an employer still owes after a death while you're on the phone to them.

Check the mortgage file too

Endowments and mortgage protection policies were sold alongside home loans for decades, and plenty of them were assigned to the lender. If there's an old mortgage, ask the lender whether a policy was assigned and who it was with. The solicitor who did the conveyancing sometimes still holds a deeds packet with the policy sitting inside it.

The money doesn't vanish just because it's dormant

When a provider genuinely can't find someone, the cash can eventually move into the Dormant Assets Scheme. The Dormant Assets Act 2022 got Royal Assent on 24 February 2022 and widened that scheme beyond banks to the insurance and pensions, investment and wealth management, and securities sectors. The line that matters is in the government's own 2025 review of the Scheme: dormant assets remain the property of their owners and can be reclaimed at any time. Moving the money doesn't kill the claim. It just changes who writes the cheque.

The industry is genuinely hunting for you now

Insurers call the people they've lost touch with "gone-aways", and the ABI publishes a framework telling firms how to find them. Many now screen their customer records against address data every six months, which is tighter than the nine months the FCA Handbook suggests. Add the FCA's Consumer Duty, which requires firms to put customers' needs first, and a flat "computer says no" is much less likely than it was. Ring the insurer with a name, a date of birth and every old postcode you can remember, and they will look.

What you'll need once you've found it

If the policyholder is alive, a name, date of birth and previous addresses is usually enough. For a claim after a death, expect to provide the death certificate, the policy number if you have it, and proof you're entitled to claim. If the policy was written in trust it pays straight to the named beneficiaries, sits outside the estate and doesn't wait for probate, which is the detail that catches most families out.

Every one of these searches only works because someone kept a record. The trouble is that it was the insurer's record, not yours, tied to an address you left in 2003. Once you've found the policy, write down the insurer, the policy number and where the paperwork lives, somewhere your executor can actually get to it. It's a five minute job, and it stops the whole hunt happening a second time, exactly the same way it does for old bank accounts nobody remembers opening.

Leave your family a map, not a mystery.

Inherit Vault is a digital inheritance vault: every account, policy, and instruction your family will need, encrypted so only you can read it, released to your executor when it genuinely matters.

Start your 14 Day Free Trial

Questions first? Read the FAQ