Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government, following National Savings and Investment (NS&I) notifying the Treasury in December 2025 of a failure to comprehensively trace accounts for some customers who died what assessment they have made of work by NS&I since December 2025 to trace accounts for customers who have died; what actions are being taken when NS&I fail to do so; and what steps they are taking to ensure appropriate compensation is paid to those affected by failures to trace accounts appropriately.

On 26 March 2026, the Minister for Pensions confirmed to Parliament that NS&I had identified an issue where the estates of deceased customers were not always repaid money from all of their accounts following a bereavement claim. These errors happened because the search process used when handling a bereavement claim failed to identify all NS&I products. The issue has been resolved for current and new bereavement claims and robust measures have been introduced to ensure this does not happen again.

Working with external consultants, NS&I reviewed 34 million customer records to identify its tracing issue. On 19 May 2026, the Minister for Pensions updated Parliament that the remediation population was estimated at up to 34,000 cases with a total value of £367 million. HM Treasury is working closely with NS&I to progress the remediation scheme, which is planned to conclude by mid-2027.

NS&I published a delivery plan that it will follow to ensure proactive, timely contact and will publish an update on progress against this plan on a quarterly basis.

NS&I announced it would seek to proactively reunite estates with combined deposits or holdings of £10 or more, providing compensatory interest of at least the Bank of England plus one percentage point rate, or any higher contractual interest accrued under the products’ terms and conditions, in line with Financial Ombudsman Service guidance.