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FOOL'S EYE VIEW
A few years ago Carol Vorderman presented a TV show called Find a Fortune where she reunited members of the public with unclaimed assets from dormant bank accounts, pensions, insurance polices etc. The show didn't last long for some reason but you don't need to count on Carol to track down long-lost assets that have been languishing in an account somewhere. You can do it yourself. Although no-one knows for sure how much unclaimed money is lying around, it's estimated that anything from £2 billion to £20 billion is lying around because the owners of the money appear to have forgotten about it. The most common reasons for people losing touch with it are because they've moved house without informing the relevant institution or dying without making a Will. In fact, last year National Savings & Investment found that one in six people who had moved home in the previous 12 months had forgotten to give their financial providers their new address. So, if you vaguely recall paying into a savings or investment account, a life insurance policy or pension in the past, but have lost the paperwork and forgotten the company's name, or if you believe that a deceased partner or relative make have forgotten to tell you about a life policy or pension, or if you're not sure which institution to contact to find lost assets, read on: Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Banks tend to make accounts dormant when there have been no transactions for at least a year and where they have been unable to make contact with the accountholder. Building societies tend to wait for at least three years before putting the account on its separate register of dormant accounts.
Both the Building Societies Association and the British Banking Association offer advice on their websites on tracing lost or dormant deposit accounts. You will need to fill in their standard claim form, answering as many questions as possible, indicating which banks you feel your account may be with and they'll circulate it to their members on your behalf. If you find an old passbook for a building society no longer on the high street, you can look up where the money has gone on the Association's website here. Pensions It's surprisingly easy to 'lose' an occupational or personal pension if you change jobs frequently or if your former employer changes names long after you've moved on. If you think you might have joined a scheme albeit for a comparatively short period of time, the Pension Schemes Registry carries details of almost 200,000 UK pension schemes, and offers a free tracing service for individuals. Shares and Dividends You might be startled to learn that nearly 70,000 Alliance & Leicester customers have failed to claim shares worth £100 million since the society's demutualisation in 1997 and there are thousands more who have also failed to collect shares from other organisations which have gone public. If you think you may have a long-lost shareholding in a UK-listed firm, contact the relevant company and ask for details of its registrars who can issue replacement share certificates and pay any unclaimed dividends. If you don't know what the company is now called, get in touch with the London Stock Exchange who should be able to tell you if a listed company has been taken over, changed its name or if still exists. Stock Market Funds Investment companies are rather fond of changing the names or closing down the funds you invest in - especially when they're not doing so well. And if the company gets taken over it can be even more difficult to track down missing funds. For unit trusts or OEICs, if you can at least remember the name of the original company and the fund you invested in, the industry's trade body, the Investment Management Association may be able to help. In the case of investment trusts, you'll need to contact the Association of Investment Trust Companies. Life Policies The Association of British Insurers can help you to track down insurance companies that may have been the subject of a takeover and a change of name but, unfortunately, it won't help you trace individual policies. You'll have to do that yourself once you've found out the name of the relevant company. You may find it easier to contact the Unclaimed Assets Register which charges a fixed fee to search on your behalf, 10% of which goes to charity. Not only will they look for unclaimed life policies but they'll also search for pensions, dividends, and unit trusts. The fee is £18 for a general search but if you think you may be entitled to an old occupational pension, a separate fee of £35 will be charged. National Savings and Premium Bonds National Savings & Investments is currently sitting on well over £1 billion of unclaimed money. Part of it comes from unclaimed Premium Bond winnings but there are many savings accounts that are lying dormant too. Use their free tracing service find forgotten accounts or to get replacement Premium Bonds if you've lost the certificates. Now you have no excuse for losing track of your money!