Unclaimed Money Increasing at an Exponential Pace
The unclaimed money pile is major source of concern for state treasuries along with federal agencies. The exponential growth of the unclaimed money has been unabated and can be seen across all the states. In addition to the larger states, now the smaller states and organizations like banks and insurance companies, are also reporting large volumes of abandoned and unclaimed funds.
Larger states like New York and California are facing the challenge of locating the owners of huge unclaimed money chunks: $10 billion and $6 billion, respectively. In a recent Press Release, about half a million dollars in unclaimed money from former Washington Mutual Bank is waiting to be claimed by its previous customers.
In a recent report from National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), state treasuries and federal agencies are holding almost $40 billion of unclaimed money and this figure is expected to rise. A lot of experts are predicting that the current mark of $40 billion unclaimed funds is going to grow towards the $100 billion mark, which translates to almost 90% of U.S. families who have somebody failing to claim the lost or abandoned money.
The larger states have already adopted various online and offline programs to spread the awareness about the unclaimed money and the claim process. The governing body and decision makers of these large states have decided on taking a different route: Once the unclaimed funds cross a stipulated time frame, these unclaimed funds are earmarked for state development programs.
The outreach program of the state along with the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), a nonprofit organization affiliated with the National Association of State Treasurers, has managed to spread awareness about the state government’s unclaimed funds initiative. Most of the state treasuries and federal authorities are trying their best to tackle the increasing volume of unclaimed money.
