U.S. Unclaimed Money Pile Increases Rapidly
The unclaimed money pile is at an all time high and continues to grow with every passing year, and this applies to all the states. Most of the states are facing these growing volumes of unclaimed money growth and are reporting huge additions to its unclaimed money vault every month.
The larger states, where the workforce diversity and migrations are extremely high, are reporting a much higher volume of unclaimed money; California is estimating an unclaimed money volume to the tune of $5.7 Billion while New York’s pile of unclaimed money has swelled up to $9.9 billion.
It is not only the state treasuries which are disclosing rising piles of unclaimed money, but banks and public financial institutions have also been reporting big numbers of unclaimed money balances. A recent Press Release is about half a million dollars in unclaimed money from former Washington Mutual Bank customers in Wisconsin is waiting to be claimed.
According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), almost $40 billion in unclaimed cash and property is sitting in state treasuries and other agencies has been lying unaccounted and in spite all the measures taken up by the state, this figure is going up every year.
The federal agencies and higher official of the State treasuries are working together to tackle unclosed bank accounts, returned tax refund, unremitted pension funds and other types of personal assets that have no takers. As the statutory limit is reached for these money and property, it is transferred to the state treasuries where it is marked as unclaimed or abandoned.
The current aggregate figure of $40 billion across the nation will soon be history and the experts and economists are predicting that very soon we will be staring at $100 billion figure of unclaimed money, which means that almost 90% of the U.S. families have somebody who has failed to reclaim their lost funds or assets. States like California and New York which have a relatively higher figure of unclaimed funds are forced to take different route. The governors and the governing body of these states are seriously considering options to utilize the unclaimed funds for state development programs.
New York State has also been successfully reuniting the heirs of original property owners who could not be located. 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 widespread awareness about the state government’s unclaimed funds initiative.
