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Your Money > Personal Finance Articles > Claim your forgotten...
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By Emma Tyrrell
We're always losing things. Keys, glasses, umbrellas, sense of humour… but £20 billion? You'd think we'd notice! Until now, banks and other financial institutions have had to do little to reunite people with their money. Instead it is down to the owner to remember or discover that they have a missing account, and embark on some detective work to find out where it is. If you were unaware of the account's existence, for example if it was an account set up for you by an elderly grandmother, the information would presumably have to be imparted to you in a dream. This cosy little set-up has suited the banks down to the ground. The amount of unclaimed money sloshing around in bank and building society accounts is believed to be between £5 and £10 billion. Banks won't say, and generally downplay the amount, while the building societies reckon their share of the forgotten billions is only around £33 million. The Financial Times revealed last year that some banks had even been using the money from customers' dormant accounts to boost their pre-tax profit figures. Abbey, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland admitted feeding some of the money through to their profit line, while Lloyds TSB and HBOS refused to comment. Of the major high street banks, only HSBC said it had not taken any assets from dormant accounts into its profit line. You might be feeling a little cheesed off that the banks are treating our forgotten dosh as their own, and the Government certainly is. Gordon Brown got his knickers in a twist over it – probably feeling that treating other people's money as your own is his prerogative. He wants to force the banks and building societies to make efforts to contact owners of dormant accounts. If they can't track them down, the Government says they should give the money to charity. A similar scheme in the Republic of Ireland has raised millions of pounds for charity since 2001, when the government there passed a law forcing financial firms to try to find lost customers. They found around 60 per cent of them before the two year cut off, and the rest of the money went into a fund for good causes. But in Ireland a dormant account is one which has lain untouched for 15 years or more. The Government here wants accounts that have been inactive for just three years to be treated as dormant. The banks disagree, and think that accounts should have been dormant for at least ten years before the money is redistributed. They are meeting with the Government this month to argue their position, and a final decision is expected to be set out in the Chancellor's autumn pre-Budget statement. While the banks and the Government slug it out, we, the potential owners of all that lovely lolly, are jumping and down trying to make our feelings known. A recent survey carried out by Experian, which runs the Unclaimed Assets Register, found that nearly 85 per cent of us think that money lying untouched in UK financial institutions should be made available for worthwhile causes, as long as the true owners can still reclaim their money. The Government is proposing that banks take out insurance which would pay out if a customer came forward to claim their money after it had been given to charity. However, the survey showed that the vast majority of us think the Government's plan to dish out money from accounts which have been inactive for just three years is a bad one. More than four fifths of the public feel that money should only be made available to charity if the accounts have been inactive for more than 10 years. Over a half of those thought the waiting time should be 15 years, as in Ireland, or more. Amazingly, 42 per cent of the people who took part in the survey thought they might have accounts themselves that they hadn't accessed in years. One group who certainly won't benefit from the Government's plans are the "bounty hunters" - companies who offer to track down your missing assets for a percentage of whatever they find, typically up to 40 per cent. Don't waste your money on them. If you think you may have dormant accounts, pension funds, shares or insurance policies lying unused somewhere, it's not that hard to track them down yourself. Experian's Unclaimed Assets Register (www.uar.co.uk) is a good place to start, as it is the only source that brings together data from banks, building societies, insurers, pension companies and other financials. It charges a flat fee of £18, for which it will search for savings accounts, life policies, personal pensions, dividends and unit trusts. An occupational pensions search costs £35. You can search online for accounts in your own name, or by post if your search is for holdings in another person's name. Since it started in 2000, the UAR has recovered more than £6 million for people seeking lost accounts. Nearly two-thirds of those making the searches are solicitors carrying out probate. Other places to try include the British Bankers Association (www.bba.org.uk) and the Building Societies Association (www.bsa.org.uk), both of which have tracing services for dormant accounts. National Savings and Investments (www.nationalsavings.co.uk) also has a tracing unit where you can find details of inactive accounts and unclaimed Premium Bond prizes. If you think you might have a personal or occupational pension schemes somewhere, the Government's Pensions service (www.pensionsservice.gov.uk/) will try to find it. The Association of British Insurers (www.abi.org.uk) will help you track down lost life insurance policies. Wherever you try, if your money is out there somewhere you'd better act soon, before Gordon gives it all away. |
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