In my country, money that you put in company retirement scheme (pension or investment account) is vested immediately, so that money is yours forever, and you can't lose it, and you are automatically enrolled most of the time.
Which is great in theory, you don't get in the situations that I Read about on this forum where people leave jobs and have to leave a part of their retirement savings behind.
But it means the average person has a TON of retirement accounts. The law gives the bank/broker/pension fund the option to consolidate accounts that have hardly any money in them to cut admin costs. Those tiny pensions are automatically transferred to the plan you're currently enrolled in. Sounds great. Except that I'm spending so much time chasing after those transfers to make sure that money really ends up in my account!! Lots of stuff goes wrong there.
BUT it looks like I've been finally able to trace €600! From an employer that didn't contribute to it so it's ALL MY MONEY. Apparantly the previous pension fund just transferred the money to the pension scheme I was enrolled in at that time without adding any kind of reference that linked the money to me.
When this is completely done I'll have only 2 pensions left + my own pre-tax retirement savings. One of the two pensions is basically an investment account where I get to make almost all the decisions, the other is a traditional pension so I don't have a lot to say, but my employer is contributing a LOT.
I started a new job this month, my previous job lasted exactly 3 years and I ended up with 3 seperate small pension pots from that employer because they kept changing the schemes. It's an administrative nightmare. And I have a tax law degree, worked in pensions in the past and have an interest in investing. I don't know how normal people do this.