Fieldwork conducted: June 1-15, 2026. Reviewed internally by SuccessionKeeper.

In short: If something happened to you tomorrow, would anyone know where your money is? We asked 1,006 UK adults, and the answers should give every household pause. Only 2.4% passed a basic four-point family emergency test. More than a quarter said nobody else knows about all their financial accounts. And among people who have had to search for a loved one's finances during illness or bereavement, one in five rated the stress a full 10 out of 10. UK financial lives have never been bigger, more digital or more scattered, and the family's map of them has not kept up.

How Prepared Are UK Households For A Financial Emergency?

This article is based on a SuccessionKeeper-commissioned survey of 1,006 UK adults aged 18 and over, conducted through UK Omnibus Group, an independent research provider with over 25 years' experience in research and insight solutions. Respondents were drawn from every UK region and across age groups, gender, social grades, income bands and investible-asset bands.

The purpose was not to define a customer profile. It was to answer a broader question about UK consumer behaviour: how prepared are households when it comes to financial organisation, wills, pensions and access to important financial information if the family ever needs to step in? In practical terms, the survey explored how many accounts people hold, how they keep track of them, how visible those accounts are to a partner or family member, their pension and will arrangements, their use of financial advisers, and how easy it would be for someone else to locate everything during illness, bereavement, probate or a family emergency.

All statistics in this article are taken from the SuccessionKeeper UK Financial Preparedness Survey 2026 unless otherwise stated. The results are unweighted, so this article treats the findings as survey evidence from the achieved sample rather than as formal national statistics. Percentages are rounded, multi-select questions may add to more than 100%, and some questions were routed only to relevant respondents, so the base is smaller where stated. Full methodology, sources and important information appear at the end. This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial, legal, tax, pension, estate-planning or investment advice.

UK Financial Preparedness Statistics 2026: The Key Findings

The headline findings from the survey are stark.

Only 2.4% of adults surveyed passed SuccessionKeeper's four-point family emergency preparedness test: having a will, having at least one other person aware of all accounts and where they are held, saying a partner would find everything very easy to locate, and keeping a shared family document or dedicated tool recording where things are
27% said nobody else knows about all their financial accounts and where they are held; only 45% said their partner is fully aware of all their accounts
Nearly half of households surveyed (48%) hold accounts across three or more entirely different financial product categories, and 12% are juggling eight or more accounts
70% hold at least one account beyond basic banking, and 40% of respondents have paid into two or more pension pots across their careers; 77% of those multi-pot savers have not fully consolidated them
Only 29% already have a will, and ownership falls to 17% among the under-45s
Even among people who already have a will, only 42% said it would be very easy for their partner to locate all accounts and documents
52% are the sole or main manager of the household's finances; a third of those managers say nobody else knows all their accounts
39% of those surveyed have either personally struggled to locate a loved one's financial information during illness, bereavement or a family emergency, or watched someone close to them struggle; one in five who lived through it rated the stress 10 out of 10
26% could not say how many countries their family holds financial assets in
65% were not aware that secure family financial information platforms exist, yet 70% said such a tool would be useful

Together, these figures point to one clear consumer trend: UK household finances have become dramatically more fragmented, but the family systems for documenting them have not kept up.

Why This Matters

These findings are not about encouraging families to share passwords, give up control or hand over access to financial accounts. They point to a more practical problem: many households do not have a reliable record of what exists and where it is held. If a partner, family member, attorney or executor ever needs to step in, the first challenge is often not accessing the money. It is knowing which bank accounts, pensions, insurance policies, investments, documents and providers exist in the first place.

That distinction matters. A will can say who should inherit, and formal legal processes decide who has authority to act. But families still need a starting point. Without one, even ordinary accounts can become difficult to identify during illness, bereavement or probate.

Only 2.4% Met All Four Practical Preparedness Conditions

To make the findings practical, we built a simple four-point test from the survey data. To pass, a respondent had to already have a will, have at least one other person who knows about all their financial accounts and where they are held, say that a partner would find it very easy to locate all accounts and documents if they suddenly had to, and keep a shared family document or dedicated tool recording where things are held. These are not advanced estate planning requirements; they are basic household continuity measures that answer one practical question: if the person who usually manages the money became seriously ill, lost capacity or died, would someone else have a realistic starting point?

Only 2.4% of respondents passed all four. Even when the test was relaxed to accept "somewhat easy" instead of "very easy", the pass rate only rose to 4.5%.

This is a SuccessionKeeper composite measure built from the survey responses, not an official government benchmark, and it should not be read as one. But it is useful precisely because it turns a vague idea, "being organised", into a concrete family emergency test, and the result suggests that many households feel broadly in control of their finances while lacking the basic documentation another person would need to step in.

How Many Accounts And Providers Do UK Households Need To Keep Track Of?

Many people do not think of themselves as financially complicated: a current account, some savings, a workplace pension and perhaps an ISA. The survey suggests the reality is often wider.

Nearly half of households surveyed, 48%, held accounts across three or more different financial product categories. Twenty-nine percent held accounts across four or more, and 14% across five or more. Beyond current accounts, selected by 72%, and savings accounts, selected by 63%, respondents reported pensions, ISAs, children’s savings, Premium Bonds, investment accounts, cryptocurrency, property investments and overseas accounts.

The issue is not simply how many accounts a household has. It is how many places someone else may need to look. Seventy percent of respondents held at least one account beyond basic banking, and 12% said their household had eight or more accounts. Each product type may involve a different provider, login, statement history, email trail, phone number and process for a partner, executor or attorney to navigate.

Pensions make the problem sharper. Forty percent of respondents had paid into two or more pension pots across their careers, excluding the State Pension. In a two-career household, that can mean several pension relationships before current accounts, savings, ISAs, insurance policies or investment platforms are even considered.

The practical question is therefore not only “how many accounts does the household have?” It is “how many places would someone else need to look, and has anyone recorded them clearly?”

These are also self-reported figures. Some respondents were not sure how many pension pots they had, and 26% could not say how many countries their family held financial assets in. The true household financial footprint may be larger than self-reported figures suggest.

How Many Pension Pots Does The Average UK Worker Have?

Pensions are the clearest example of quiet fragmentation. Four in ten respondents (40%) have paid into two or more pension pots across their careers, excluding the State Pension, consistent with a working life shaped by job changes and automatic enrolment, and 5% could not say how many pots they have at all. Among those with two or more pots, 77% have not fully consolidated them: some are partially merged, some plan to merge, some have no plans to, and one in twenty did not know consolidation was even possible.

To be clear, this is not a recommendation to consolidate. Pension consolidation can involve exit charges, loss of valuable guarantees, employer scheme considerations and, in some cases, regulated financial advice. The household-preparedness point is separate and simpler: if pensions are spread across multiple providers and old employers, your family needs a reliable record of where they are held, because tracing a pension without the employer name, provider or scheme reference is slow and uncertain.

The national cost of losing track is already documented. The Pensions Policy Institute's Lost Pensions 2024 research estimates there are 3.3 million lost pension pots in the UK containing £31.1 billion in assets, an average of £9,470 per pot. Lost pensions are what financial disorganisation looks like at national scale: money that exists and belongs to real families, but that nobody can reconnect with its owner. The same quiet logic applies to old ISAs, dormant bank accounts, insurance policies, Premium Bonds, overseas accounts and digital assets.

Financial Complexity Is Growing Faster Than Family Preparation

You might hope that people with more complicated finances take more care to document them. The data says they try, and fail to keep up. It is true that the proportion who say "nobody else knows about all my accounts" falls as account numbers rise, from 32% among households with one to three accounts to 17% among those with thirteen or more; more assets do prompt more disclosure. But look at confidence, and the pattern reverses: among the simplest households, 31% believe their partner would find everything very easily, while among the most complex households that collapses to 17%. Even though the most complex households are more than three times as likely as the simplest to keep a shared family document, only 21% of them actually do.

In other words, as financial lives grow, the paper trail grows more slowly than the pile of accounts it is supposed to describe. The people with the most to lose know, better than anyone, that their families could not find it all, and they are the least confident group in the survey, with reason.

In Most UK Homes, One Person Holds The Map

Household financial knowledge is usually concentrated in one head. More than half of respondents (52%) said they mostly manage the family's finances themselves, a further 12% said their partner or spouse mostly manages them, and only 24% said they manage the finances jointly with their partner. Taken together, that means that among households where a couple's finances are managed at all, roughly three quarters are effectively run by one person.

This is common, and often practical: in many families one person is simply more comfortable with banking, pensions, bills and paperwork, and over time becomes the informal keeper of the household financial records. But a single financial manager is a single point of failure. If that person dies, becomes seriously ill, loses mental capacity or is otherwise unable to communicate, the other partner, next of kin, attorney under a lasting power of attorney or executor may have to reconstruct the financial picture from scratch.

The survey shows how exposed families are. Twenty-seven percent of all respondents said nobody else knows about all their financial accounts and where they are held, and among the main money managers this rises to 33%. Among cryptocurrency holders, whose digital assets are the least discoverable of all, 23% said nobody else knows about their accounts. A crypto wallet with no recorded existence may never be identified by the family. In self-custody cases, assets may also become unreachable if recovery information is unavailable.

None of this proves secrecy, and that would be the wrong conclusion. It far more likely reflects ordinary life: accounts opened at different times, pensions from old jobs, digital statements, paper files, forgotten provider names and the assumption that there will be time to explain it all later. The problem is that financial emergencies do not always arrive with time to prepare.

"My Partner Knows Everything" Is Often An Assumption, Not A System

Three in ten respondents (30%) said it would be very easy for their partner or family to locate all accounts and documents because the other person "knows everything". We took that group at their word, then checked their other answers, and the confidence was not always supported by the rest of the answers. Among the partnered people who claimed it would be very easy, 38% had, elsewhere in the same survey, not listed their partner as someone fully aware of all their accounts. Twelve percent of the "very easy" group simultaneously ticked "nobody else knows about all my accounts", a contrast inside a ten-minute questionnaire. And 14% of them keep track of their finances mostly from memory or with no system at all, which suggests that “very easy” may depend on knowledge that has not been written down or shared in a reliable way.

This does not mean respondents were dishonest. It means "my partner knows everything" is usually a feeling rather than a tested system. A partner may know the main current account, the mortgage provider and the pension that gets talked about; they may know nothing of the ISA opened years ago, the pension from a previous employer, the old life policy, the Premium Bonds, the crypto exchange or the solicitor holding the will.

There is a simple practical test: could your partner or a trusted person list where your money, pensions, insurance and key documents are held, without asking you? If the answer is uncertain, the household is not fully prepared, however confident it feels. It is better to test that assumption early, while the information is easy to explain, than to discover the gap during illness, bereavement or probate.

How Organised Are UK Adults With Their Money? Half Admit: Not Very

Asked to rate their own financial organisation from 1 to 10, respondents averaged just 5.5, and more than half placed themselves on the lower half of the scale. But the more revealing finding is that even the organised half is not as findable as it feels: among people who rated themselves 8 out of 10 or higher, 22% still said nobody else knows where all their accounts are held.

Personal organisation does transfer to others, but only partly. Among the self-rated 8s and above, just 12% think their partner would struggle to find things, against 39% among those who rate themselves 3 or lower. Organisation helps; it simply does not transfer as completely as people assume. A person may have tidy folders, labelled email accounts and immaculate spreadsheets, but if nobody else knows the system exists, which accounts it covers or how it works, it may not help during illness, bereavement or probate. The relevant question is not "am I financially organised?" but "could someone I trust find the information without me?"

Are Banking Apps Enough To Organise Family Finances?

The most common way respondents keep track of their finances is banking apps, used by 63%. That is unsurprising: they are convenient, familiar and checked constantly. But a banking app is not a household financial inventory, a death file or an "in case of death" document. It shows what sits inside one provider. It does not show the old workplace pension, the ISA held elsewhere, the life insurance policy, the children's savings, the overseas account, the crypto wallet or the location of the will.

Beyond apps, the survey shows reliance on fragile methods: 19% use paper folders, 15% spreadsheets, 13% notes apps, 13% mostly memory, and 7% admit they have no system at all, while only 9% use a dedicated financial management tool and just 8% keep a shared family document, the two methods actually designed to help someone else. Paper files and spreadsheets can work, but only if they are current, accessible and known to the right person. A spreadsheet on a personal laptop that nobody else knows about is not a family continuity plan, and an out-of-date folder may create false comfort. For families who want to build a practical record, SuccessionKeeper's death file checklist explains what to record and why.

How Easy Would It Be For A Partner To Find Everything?

Only 30% of respondents said it would be very easy for their partner or family to locate all accounts and documents, and a further 37% said somewhat easy. That leaves a third of the survey (33%) who said it would be difficult, very difficult, or that they simply were not sure.

The difficulty families face rarely begins with probate forms, pension scheme rules or bank bereavement teams. It begins with a far more basic question: what accounts exist? If the family does not know the provider name, the old employer, the policy type, the document location or the adviser's contact details, the search means working through drawers, old statements, email inboxes, direct debits and tax records, while dealing with illness or grief. That is not the moment to start listing the family financial accounts.

What Happens When A Family Cannot Find Financial Information After A Death Or Illness?

This is not scaremongering about a hypothetical. Nearly one in five respondents (18%) have personally struggled, base 184, to locate financial information during a family emergency, illness or bereavement, and a further 21% watched someone close to them go through it. That is 39% of those surveyed with direct or near-direct experience of the search: the drawer-by-drawer, inbox-by-inbox hunt that grieving families know as death admin.

Among those who went through it, the hardest things to find were bank accounts (30%), passwords and logins (26%), insurance policies (24%), legal documents (23%) and pension information (18%). Most telling of all, 20% said they were not even sure what accounts and assets existed. The hardest part was not always finding a known account. For many families, it was not knowing whether another account or asset existed in the first place. Asked to rate the stress of the experience from 1 to 10, they averaged 6.6, with 63% scoring it 6 or above and one in five giving it the maximum 10 out of 10. And within that group one detail stands out: the people who were unsure what assets even existed reported an average stress of 8.0 out of 10, far above everyone else. The most painful search of all is the one where you do not know what you are searching for.

This is why financial organisation should not be treated as ordinary admin. It is family risk management. Whether the trigger is bereavement, a stroke, dementia or an accident, someone, a partner, an adult child, an attorney, an executor, will one day need the records of your financial life. The only open question is whether they will be handed it, or forced to draw it themselves at the worst possible moment.

Why Families Who Have Lived It Are The Most Convinced

Nobody in the survey believes in getting organised more than the people who have been through the search. Among those who personally struggled to locate a loved one's financial information, 66% now describe getting the family's financial information organised as urgent or something they know they must address, nearly double the rate among people the problem has never touched, and 84% of them say a secure family-information platform would be useful, the strongest endorsement of any group in the survey. Watching someone close go through it has almost the same effect. Proximity to the problem is the single strongest predictor of demand in the entire dataset: the closer people get to the reality, the more clearly they see the need.

What even that hard-won conviction could not supply, until recently, was a practical way to act on it. Only around one in ten of those who lived through the search keep a shared family document today, not for lack of motivation, but because the mechanism barely existed. Good intentions need somewhere to land.

That is also why “I’ll do it later” is not a plan. In practice, the trigger is often illness, bereavement or a family emergency, and the households who rated their search stress 10 out of 10 were families who only discovered the gap once the information was already needed. The best time to record all the assets is before that trigger, while the information is still easy to explain.

What Percentage Of UK Adults Have A Will?

Only 29% of respondents already have a will, and ownership varies sharply by age: 17% among the under-45s, 35% among those aged 45 to 64, and 73% among the over-65s. The pattern is understandable, but it means most people delay formal estate planning until later life, even though the need for family financial preparedness can arrive decades earlier. One note of transparency: adults aged 65 and over make up a smaller share of this survey than of the UK adult population, so will ownership across all UK adults is likely somewhat higher than the survey's overall figure, as the steep age gradient suggests; the finding that most working-age adults have no will stands either way. A further 53% say they intend to make a will at some point, whether within a year, within a few years, after retirement or after reaching a certain level of assets. Intention, however, is not a document.

Among those who were undecided about making a will or had ruled it out, the most common reasons were familiar: "I don't think I need one yet" (32%), "my finances are simple" (21%), "I haven't got around to it" (19%) and, most candidly, "I avoid thinking about it" (16%). Health concerns (35%) were the most common trigger people said would push them to act. The problem with waiting for a trigger is that some health events, bereavements or family emergencies leave little time to organise the information once it is needed.

It is also worth saying plainly what a will does not do. A will records who inherits and who administers the estate. It rarely records where anything is, and the survey proves the gap: even among people who already have a will, only 50% said their partner is fully aware of all accounts and where they are held, and only 42% said it would be very easy for their partner to locate everything. Estate planning is not complete just because a will exists. A will without a map is a set of instructions for distributing assets nobody can locate, and probate begins with a treasure hunt either way.

Do Financial Advisers Know Where All Your Accounts Are?

Fourteen percent of respondents currently work with a financial adviser, and that group is genuinely better prepared than the wider sample: more likely to have a will, less likely to say nobody else knows about their accounts, and more likely to believe their partner could find everything easily. Structured, professional attention works.

But there are two limits. First, most households do not use an adviser. Second, even where one exists, the adviser rarely holds the whole financial records: across the whole survey, only 8% of respondents said a financial adviser is fully aware of all their accounts and where they are held, and only 6% said a solicitor is. An adviser may know the assets they advise on, but not every current account, old pension, employer benefit, insurance policy, crypto account or document location. This is not a criticism of advisers; it is a practical boundary. A family financial inventory is not a substitute for financial, legal or regulated pension advice. It is the complementary layer underneath, the inventory that shows the household, the adviser, the solicitor, the attorney or the executor where the search should begin.

What Happens To Overseas Accounts And Assets When Someone Dies?

Fourteen percent of respondents said they or their family hold financial assets in two or more countries, and more strikingly, 26% said they were not sure how many countries their family holds assets in. This matters for families with overseas bank accounts, pensions from time spent abroad, inherited assets, foreign property or relatives in another jurisdiction, because cross-border finances get complicated quickly: different providers, tax systems, documents, languages and contact points all make the search harder, especially after death or loss of capacity.

The survey shows where that road leads. Among respondents whose families hold assets in two or more countries, 26% have already personally struggled to locate financial information during an emergency or bereavement, compared with 18% across the whole survey. The practical issue is not that every family has complex international assets; it is that uncertainty itself creates risk. If a person cannot say how many countries their family's money sits in, the eventual searcher inherits that uncertainty at the hardest possible time.

"This Does Not Apply To Me" Is Often The Riskiest Assumption

More than a fifth of respondents (22%) said that organising their financial information for their family "does not apply to me". We looked at who these people actually are, and the picture is striking: 79% live in a partnered household, 28% hold four or more financial accounts, 21% are parents of children under 18, 29% have two or more pension pots, 69% have no will, and 39% of them, far above the survey average of 27%, say nobody else knows about all their accounts.

In other words, the people who believe this problem does not apply to them are among the least findable in the survey. This is not about blame; it is a common blind spot. People assume financial preparedness is for the wealthy, the elderly or those with complex estates, but a person can be young, healthy, employed and renting, and still hold multiple accounts that someone else would need to locate in an emergency. The question is not "am I wealthy enough for this to matter?" It is "would someone else know where to start?" If you caught yourself thinking this section is not about you, the data suggests it probably is.

Parents Are A Clear Preparedness Segment

Four in ten respondents (41%) are parents of children under 18, the group with the most riding on family financial preparedness, and they know it: 58% of parents said getting their financial information organised is urgent or something they know they should address, and 84% said a platform like this would be useful, the highest of any group in the survey.

For parents, the reasons run deeper than inheritance. Guardianship arrangements, life insurance, children's savings, education funds and the simple practical need for another adult to understand the household position all depend on information being findable. If one parent becomes unavailable, the other parent or a guardian should not have to reconstruct the family's finances from scratch while managing a family crisis. For parents, this is not paperwork; it is continuity, the difference between a family that can keep functioning and a family adding a financial investigation to its grief. The awareness is clearly there; what most families have lacked is a simple way to turn it into a record.

The Awareness Gap: People See The Need Once It Is Explained

Before the survey introduced the concept, 65% of respondents were not aware that secure platforms existed to help people organise and share financial information with nominated family members. Yet once the idea was described, 70% said such a tool would be useful, and 72% said they would consider using one or might do so depending on price and offering.

That gap matters. It suggests that many households are not rejecting the idea of organising financial information for their family. They may simply not know that a structured way to do it exists.

The category is still emerging, and the language matters. This is not a budgeting app, online banking, a will, or a password-sharing tool. It is closer to a secure family financial inventory, a death file, or an “in case of death” document: a private record of accounts, pensions, insurance policies, assets and important documents so that the right people know where to start if they ever need to step in.

The Practical Answer Is A Map, Not The Keys

Families should not solve this problem by sharing bank passwords, PINs, one-time passcodes or online banking credentials. That creates security risk and may breach account terms. The safer approach is to keep a private, structured record of where things are held: provider names, account types, pension providers and old employers, insurance providers, document locations, policy references where appropriate, and adviser or solicitor contacts.

This is the difference between access and discoverability. A family member does not need to log in to your bank to know an account exists. An executor does not need your investment platform password to know which provider to contact. An attorney does not need a PIN to know where the paperwork is.

They need a clear, current and secure record of what exists and where it is held.

What Would Make People Trust A Platform Like This?

People were clear about what a service handling family financial information must prove, and the concerns are rational: fear of scams or fraud (41%), security (36%), cost (33%) and privacy (32%) top the list. Their requirements follow directly: bank-level security (36%), FCA regulation or compliance (27%), clear privacy controls (26%), end-to-end encryption (23%), UK-based data storage (21%), transparent pricing (21%) and free trials (20%). People are open to the idea, but they will not tolerate vague claims; they want privacy, security, transparency, control and plain English. We think every one of those demands is exactly right, and they define how SuccessionKeeper is built.

What This Survey Says About UK Financial Preparedness

The modern financial life is spread across more providers, products, platforms and borders than most families realise, and the account footprint has expanded far faster than the family record. In most homes one person holds the full picture, most partners do not know where everything is held, and the confidence people feel about their household coping collapses under cross-examination within a single questionnaire. Even a will, the one preparedness step most people recognise, leaves the discovery problem unsolved for half the people who have one.

The strongest lesson from the survey is simple: being personally organised is not enough. Your financial life also needs to be understandable to the people who would have to step in. That does not mean giving up control, and it does not mean handing over passwords. It means recording the key information while you are still able to explain it.

Frequently Asked Questions About UK Financial Preparedness

How financially prepared are UK households?

Far less than they feel. Only 2.4% of adults in the survey passed SuccessionKeeper's four-point family emergency preparedness test, which looked at whether they had a will, whether another person knew about all their accounts, whether everything would be very easy for a partner to locate, and whether a shared family document or dedicated tool existed. A third (33%) could not confidently say their partner would be able to locate all accounts and documents if needed.

How many financial accounts does the average UK household have?

Around four on average, but the spread matters more than the count: nearly half of surveyed households (48%) hold accounts across three or more different product categories, spanning current accounts, savings, pensions, ISAs, investments, Premium Bonds, children's savings, cryptocurrency and overseas accounts, and 12% hold eight or more accounts. Pension pots stack on top per person: 40% of respondents have paid into two or more across their careers.

Do partners know where all financial accounts are held?

Often not. Only 45% of respondents said their partner or spouse is fully aware of all their financial accounts and where they are held, and 27% said nobody else knows at all. This does not necessarily mean accounts are hidden; it usually reflects how accounts, pensions and documents accumulate quietly over time.

How hard is it for families to find financial information after a death or illness?

39% of those surveyed have either personally struggled to locate financial information during a family emergency, illness or bereavement (18%) or watched someone close to them struggle (21%). Those who went through it rated the stress at an average of 6.6 out of 10, with one in five rating it 10 out of 10, and the hardest items to find were bank accounts, passwords, insurance policies, legal documents and pensions. One in five was not even sure what assets existed.

How many UK adults have a will?

29% of respondents already have a will, rising from 17% among the under-45s to 73% among the over-65s. A further 53% intend to make one at some point. The most common reasons for delay are believing it is not needed yet, having simple finances, and not getting around to it.

Does a will tell my family where my accounts are?

Usually not. A will records who inherits and who administers the estate, but it rarely lists every bank account, pension provider, ISA, insurance policy or digital asset. Even among survey respondents who already have a will, only 50% said their partner is fully aware of all accounts, and only 42% said everything would be very easy to locate. Families still need a separate financial inventory.

Are banking apps enough to organise family finances?

No. Banking apps are useful, but they show what sits inside one provider. They do not show old pensions, ISAs held elsewhere, insurance policies, Premium Bonds, crypto accounts, overseas assets, paper documents or solicitor-held documents. 63% of respondents rely on banking apps, while only 8% keep a shared family document.

How many pension pots does the average UK worker have?

40% of respondents have paid into two or more pension pots across their careers, excluding the State Pension, and 5% are not sure how many they have. Among multi-pot savers, 77% have not fully consolidated their pensions. Consolidation is not right for everyone, but every family should have a record of where the pots are held. Nationally, the Pensions Policy Institute estimates 3.3 million pension pots worth £31.1 billion are currently lost.

What is a death file or "in case of death" document?

A death file, sometimes called an "in case of death" document or family financial inventory, is a practical record that helps trusted people find important financial, legal and personal information if someone dies or becomes unable to manage their affairs. It typically records account providers, pension details, insurance policies, document locations and adviser or solicitor contacts. It should never include bank passwords, PINs or one-time passcodes.

What is the safest way to help family find my accounts?

Record what exists and where, without sharing logins or passwords. A secure financial inventory should help a nominated person identify the relevant provider, document or contact point, while leaving formal access, legal authority and estate administration to the proper legal processes. That is the approach SuccessionKeeper is built on: the map, not the keys.

Methodology

This article is based on the SuccessionKeeper UK Financial Preparedness Survey 2026, a survey of 1,006 UK adults aged 18 and over, commissioned by SuccessionKeeper and conducted through UK Omnibus Group, an independent research provider, via an online research panel. Fieldwork was conducted June 1-15, 2026. Respondents were drawn across all UK regions, age groups, gender, social grades, household income bands and investible-asset bands.

Percentages are based on the full sample of 1,006 unless otherwise stated and are rounded, so figures may not sum exactly to 100%; multi-select questions may sum to more than 100%. Questions about what was hardest to locate and the stress of the experience were asked only of respondents with relevant experience (base 184). Reasons for not creating a will were asked only of respondents who were undecided or did not plan to make one (base 176). Sub-group analyses, including main household money managers, parents, adviser clients, will holders, multi-country families, age bands, respondents with multiple pension pots and those who struggled to locate financial information, were calculated from the respondent-level survey data; sub-group bases vary and the smallest should be treated as indicative. The average number of accounts per household is estimated from banded responses using band midpoints.

The four-point family emergency preparedness test is a SuccessionKeeper composite measure created from the survey responses. To pass, respondents had to meet all four conditions: they had a will; at least one other person knew about all their financial accounts and where they were held; they said a partner would find it very easy to locate all accounts and documents if needed; and they kept a shared family document or used a dedicated tool recording where things were held. It is intended as a practical consumer preparedness indicator, not an official regulatory, legal or government benchmark.

Limitations: the survey was conducted via an online research panel and results are unweighted. Respondents were drawn from all UK regions and demographic groups, but the achieved sample under-represents adults aged 65 and over (around one in ten respondents, against roughly a quarter of the UK adult population) and over-represents adults aged 25 to 44. Findings should therefore be read as describing the surveyed sample of UK adults rather than as formally weighted national statistics. Most headline findings vary little by age; statistics that rise strongly with age, such as will ownership, are likely to be somewhat higher across the full adult population, which is why age breakdowns are shown where relevant.

Findings may be cited with attribution to the SuccessionKeeper UK Financial Preparedness Survey 2026. Full data tables, sub-group bases and methodology details are available on request via successionkeeper.com.

Sources

SuccessionKeeper UK Financial Preparedness Survey 2026: 1,006 UK adults aged 18 and over, conducted via UK Omnibus Group.

Pensions Policy Institute: Briefing Note 138, Lost Pensions 2024 This is the main PPI source. It states that there are an estimated 3.3 million lost pots containing £31.1 billion of assets.
PDF: Lost Pensions 2024 Direct PDF copy of the briefing note.
Association of British Insurers: Brits missing £31.1bn in unclaimed pension pots Useful secondary source summarising the same PPI research and headline figures.

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Important Information And Limitations

This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial, legal, tax, pension, insurance, estate-planning or investment advice, and should not be relied upon as such. Nothing here is a recommendation to consolidate pensions, purchase products or take any specific financial or legal action; pension consolidation in particular can involve charges, loss of guarantees or benefits and may require regulated advice. If you are unsure about any financial or legal decision, including making a will or a lasting power of attorney, consider seeking advice from a regulated financial adviser or a qualified solicitor. External statistics are attributed to their original sources. SuccessionKeeper is a financial organisation and information-sharing tool; it does not provide access to accounts, hold client money, store banking credentials or provide regulated advice.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial or legal advice. Speak to a regulated financial adviser or solicitor about your specific circumstances.

About The Author

Peter Vulchev is co-founder of SuccessionKeeper, a private vault that helps families keep their financial lives organised and accessible to the right people when it matters. He spent his career across BlackRock, investment advisory teams of Apollo Global and Lone Star Funds before building SuccessionKeeper with co-founder Deyan Nenov.

Editorial note: This article was reviewed internally by SuccessionKeeper for factual accuracy, survey interpretation and product accuracy. It has not been reviewed by an external solicitor, tax adviser or regulated financial adviser.

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