Reclaiming dormant money
With recession looming and everyone increasingly watching the pennies, it seems remarkable that there should be any cash lying around unclaimed. But forget fishing down the back of the sofa for pennies, this is big stuff. Four years ago the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown announced that there was some £500m lying ‘dormant‘ in UK building societies and banks.
How, you may ask, can this happen. Well there’s an old Scottish saying that Gordon will be familiar with ‘many a mickle maks a muckle‘. Many little things add up to a big thing, in plain English. And this half a billion quid is made up of lots of little things … money forgotten in moribund bank and building society accounts, old insurance plans, share certificates, and cash in National Savings accounts.
Typically the sums are small, a few pounds in some cases. Often the customer has moved on and not cleared their old current account. Sometimes the person has died and the account has been missed by their family. Now Gordon’s plan is to snatch those millions and use it as the core of a charity to do good works. We have no problem with that - better than using it to prop up the Exchequer’s flagging finances. But how much better if you could claim any of that cash that belongs to you, before it disappears forever.
Banks reckon they have between £250 and £300m sitting unclaimed. This has accumulated amongst 500 British banks over the last century. Obviously there aren’t that many UK banks now. Most have been swallowed up by bigger and bigger banks down the years. There are now 42 banks and all are signed up to a scheme to reunite customers with their cash. This includes all the big high street names, which between them have access to all UK clearing bank accounts going back to the year 1900. If you think you or yours have a moribund account, contact mylostaccount for details on how to claim.
Building societies have consolidated even more furiously down the years. A century ago there were 1500 of them, now just 59. But all have signed up to mylostaccount. With an estimated £130m or more lying unclaimed in building society accounts, it has to be worth a pop.
Thousands of us buy life insurance and pension policies yet never claim on them. The companies reckon there is around £100m unclaimed on life policies and £300m on pension policies which have never paid out. Go to the Unclaimed Assets Register, or UAR, for more. The Pension Service should also be able to help.
And while we hear a lot about benefit abuse, the big story is the amount of benefits we DON’T claim. The Department of Work and Pensions reckons around £10bn of means-tested benefits go unclaimed each year, including pensions, council tax and housing benefits. Go to Citizens Advice or HM Revenue and Customs.
We looked at the supersafe haven of National Savings & Investments a couple of weeks ago. The problem is, loads of us pop our money into NS&I and promptly forget all about it. The figure unclaimed, including savings accounts, unclaimed premium bonds and their prizes, is staggering … over a billion pounds! Okay, the average balance in moribund Ordinary Accounts is a measly 19p … but even these accounts add up to £200m altogether. You’ll find the URL for the National Savings tracing service on the blog.
The plunge in share prices is bad enough without you simply losing your shares. But that’s what loads of us do. Buy them, then move without a forwarding address. Or simply forget we owned them. Many people die owning shares their families know nothing about of course. The total sum unclaimed is at least £12bn … and that’s before you factor in the dividend payments! The Association of Investment Companies (or AIC) can help you track down lost shares.
We’ve all heard about unclaimed Lottery prizes. After a while they lapse, though at any one time there are millions of pouns unclaimed. But this is dwarfed by the £31m of unclaimed Premium Bond prizes. There’s no point having this supersafe investment if you’re not checking your numbers! You can catch up on the winners at the National Savings website.
Related: www.mylostaccount.org.uk, www.nsandi.com, www.theaic.co.uk, www.uar.co.uk, www.thepensionservice.gov.uk, Citizens Advice, HM Revenue and Customs
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