The Equitable Life Payment Scheme, managed by the Treasury, was derided by the Public Accounts Committee over delays and data losses.

Prior to the report, the Treasury had admitted to destroying a disc containing the details of 350,000 policyholders’ names and addresses.

So far the government has paid out about £700m to 545,000 policyholders of the firm, which almost collapsed leaving thousands of pensioners financially worse off.

Equitable Life did not hold addresses for almost 500,000 company pension scheme members. It would like trustees, administrators or authorised representatives of pension schemes that invested between 1992 and 2000 to share their members’ addresses. A campaign to promote awareness will now be launched to address the issue.

Company pension schemes have been urged to return data sharing agreements as soon as possible to enable the scheme to write to remaining members directly and begin the payment process.

The scheme’s website features a list of company pension schemes it has been unable to trace in order to follow up individual member payments.

The compensation scheme is due to close in March, next year.