Times (London) May 15, 2004
Get reacquainted with your lost accounts for nothing
FOR years banks and building societies have remained coy about the billions of pounds sitting in dormant savings accounts. Now, with the issue firmly on the Government's radar, they are making desperate attempts to appear as the good guys. The Building Societies Association (BSA) this week urged people who think they may have money in a forgotten savings account not to pay others to search for them. The BSA says it can offer a better service free. The British Bankers Association and National Savings & Investments also offer free search facilities.
Adrian Coles, director-general of the BSA, says: "We want to do everything possible to reunite people with their money. Some organisations charge for this search and we are keen to let people know that they can do it free."
Cast as the villains of the piece are companies such as FundsReunited, which was launched this week. It charges people £15 to do the search for lost accounts on their behalf. One of the directors of the company, Anthony Webb, used to run a similar service known as Wealth Detectives and then as Rebank.
Simon Ford, business development officer of FundsReunited, defended the service. He admitted that the firm used the free search facilities provided by banks and building societies, but said it could save people time. "We are a convenience outlet. People don't like filling in forms, so we do it for them."
Estimates of how much money lies in dormant accounts vary from £5 billion to £20 billion. Financial institutions have started taking the issue seriously after Gordon Brown's announcement in the Budget that financial institutions needed to make greater efforts to give the money back to its rightful owners. If not, the funds will be used for charitable causes, as is the case in Ireland.
The experiences of Times reader Susan Smith are proof that some banks needed this big stick approach. When Miss Smith handed in her old passbooks for updating at the local branch of Lloyds TSB in 2001, she was looking forward to a mini-windfall from 16 years of unpaid interest. Instead Lloyds told her that it could find no trace of the accounts. The bank said: "We may have received and agreed to a request to close the account without the passbook being present."
Three years later, Miss Smith, from Stoke-on-Trent, was still chasing Lloyds for compensation. She says: "I was outraged by Lloyds' dismissive attitude. I was not happy about its writing off the matter along with several hundred pounds of my money. I thought it was the bank's responsibility to find the money or, failing that, to compensate me."
Miss Smith originally opened two TSB accounts at a branch in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1974. One was an ordinary account and the other a special investment account. In both cases the last entries were dated
1975. Miss Smith's local Lloyds branch handed over 33p to recompense her for the sum in one account, but would do nothing about the £175 plus accumulated interest in the other account.But, after the intervention of The Times, LloydsTSB says it has located the missing account. A spokeswoman says: "When the bank computerised its records in the 1970s, Miss Smith's old passbook number was not correctly linked to the new passbook number. This was human error on our part and we have apologised for the mistake and for the fact that this was not picked up in our initial investigation three years ago.
"The money will be refunded to her account and the total, with added interest, is £538.53. On top of that we are offering Miss Smith £50 as a gesture of goodwill."
It is not only "lost" savings accounts that can be reclaimed from financial serivces companies. People who have moved houses or switched employers may have lost track of pensions, shares, unit trusts or life insurance policies. The Unclaimed Assets Register has a list of more than five million of these assets, and a search costs £18.
XAN RICE and MARK ATHERTON
LINKS: BBA: 0207-216-8909,