AI Guides › Playbooks
By Nigel Guy · 8 min read
Most people read a headline about billions sitting unclaimed, search "find my lost money" and land on a company that wants a fee or a cut. Or they ask a chatbot whether they have unclaimed money, get a confident list of possibilities and feel they've done something. Neither checks a single real record. The searches that matter are free, run by the institutions holding the money, and take an evening if you know what to feed them.
The rule: search the official registers yourself, for free, and use Claude only to remember your past and organise the paperwork. It can't search the registers for you, and it can't tell you what you're owed.
All four are free at time of writing. Each one answers a different question, and none of them shows you a balance before you've proved who you are.
| Register | What it finds | What you need | What it won't do |
|---|---|---|---|
| My Lost Account | Dormant bank, building society and NS&I accounts. Run by UK Finance, the Building Societies Association and NS&I, with more than 70 providers taking part | An online profile, plus the providers you think you used and your past names and addresses | It's slow. The service says to allow up to three months for a reply |
| Pension Tracing Service (GOV.UK) | Contact details for a workplace or personal pension scheme | The name of a past employer or pension provider | It won't say whether you have a pension or what it's worth. You have to contact the scheme yourself |
| Find unclaimed court money (Court Funds Office) | Money paid into the civil courts in England and Wales, such as settlement sums, that nobody has claimed | An account name or account number to search against | You can't claim from the index itself. You need more information from the Court Funds Office first, and accounts left inactive for 30 years pass their last claim date |
| Find a Child Trust Fund (HMRC) | Who provides a Child Trust Fund, for anyone born between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011 | Your National Insurance number if you're 16 or over, or the child's details if you're a parent or guardian | It won't show the balance or find Junior ISAs. The online form has to be finished in one go |
Also worth a minute: the NS&I prize checker if you have a Premium Bonds holder's number. Northern Ireland court money is handled separately through nidirect.
Every register asks the same question: who did you bank with, work for or deal with, and when? The sweep answers it once and reuses the answer everywhere.
Claude does three useful things here: it jogs your memory, turns the answers into a tidy ledger and drafts the follow-up letters. It can't log in to these services, verify your identity, see dormant account data or confirm that money exists. Anything it says about providers you "probably" had is a guess.
You can do this on the free plan. You don't need to give it any account numbers, your National Insurance number or your date of birth. Leave placeholders and fill them in yourself when you send the letters.
Fill in what you remember for each bracket. "Not sure" is a fine answer.
You are helping me prepare to search the free official UK registers for money I may have lost track of. You are an organiser and memory prompt, not a searcher: you cannot see any account, pension or court records, so never suggest that I definitely have money anywhere.
My rough history:
- Addresses and years: [ADDRESSES_AND_YEARS]
- Names I have used: [NAMES]
- Employers and years, including short jobs: [EMPLOYERS_AND_YEARS]
- Banks, building societies, savings or bonds I remember: [ACCOUNTS_REMEMBERED]
- Court cases, tribunal awards or settlements: [COURT_MATTERS or "none"]
- Children born 1 Sept 2002 to 2 Jan 2011, or me if I was: [CTF_CANDIDATES or "none"]
Steps:
1. Ask me up to five short questions to fill obvious gaps (for example, years with no employer listed). Wait for my answers before going on.
2. Produce a table with columns: Item | Type | Approx dates | Register to use (My Lost Account / Pension Tracing Service / Find unclaimed court money / HMRC Child Trust Fund / None) | What I still need to find.
3. Below the table, list any items you could not place, and say why.
Rules: do not invent provider names, mergers or scheme names. If you think a bank or employer may have changed name, flag it as "check" instead of stating it as fact. Do not ask for account numbers, my National Insurance number or my date of birth.
Before answering, check that every row came from something I told you, and that no row claims money exists.
Fill in the scheme's name and address from the Pension Tracing Service result, plus your employment details.
You are drafting a short, plain letter from me to a UK pension scheme asking whether it holds a pension in my name.
Inputs:
- Scheme name and address: [SCHEME_NAME_AND_ADDRESS]
- Employer and approximate employment dates: [EMPLOYER_AND_DATES]
- Names I used while working there: [NAMES_USED]
- Address I lived at then: [ADDRESS_THEN]
Write a letter under 200 words that asks: whether a pension is held for me, its current value, and what proof of identity they need. Leave [NATIONAL_INSURANCE_NUMBER], [DATE_OF_BIRTH] and [SIGNATURE] as placeholders for me to fill in by hand. Use British English and a polite, factual tone. Do not include legal threats or deadlines.
If any input is missing, ask me for it rather than guessing. Before answering, check the letter contains no invented reference numbers or policy details.
Say Priya is 41. She remembers two building society passbooks from childhood, a supermarket job at 17, three office jobs and a small claims case she won but never chased. The building societies go to My Lost Account on the first evening. The four employers go through the Pension Tracing Service, which returns three scheme contacts, and she sends three letters using Prompt 2. The court case gets a search on the court money index under her old surname. She was born before 2002, so the Child Trust Fund row reads "None". Three months on, her ledger shows which rows found records and which said "no trace", which is an answer she didn't have before. This is an illustration, not a prediction of what anyone will find.
The trap is paying for what's free. My Lost Account says plainly that there's no need to pay a fee to find old accounts. Treat any cold call, text or advert offering to "release" a pension early or find money you're owed with suspicion. Pension scams often open this way.
The smaller trap is believing the chatbot. If Claude says a bank "was absorbed into" another, that's a guess until the register or provider confirms it.