Unclaimed Property Increasing at Rapid Speed
Almost all of the state and federal agencies are unanimous in their verdict that the pile of U.S unclaimed money is growing rapidly with each passing day and there is no practical solution in sight. National and State unclaimed databases are swelling with unclaimed funds at a rapid pace with new and lost money being added monthly without any signs of slowing down or without any increased activity on the reclaim front.
Larger states have bigger problems with California reporting almost $6 billion of unclaimed funds and New York’s pile swelling up to $10 billion. With most of the states taking concrete steps to reunite the owners of these lost funds with their lost money, the number of residents coming out to claim their lost money has surely gone up as compared to earlier days.
Apart from the state and federal treasuries that are experiencing a deluge of unclaimed funds, many of the well known and popular banks are also disclosing a large number of unclaimed bank balances and this number has been growing rapidly. Washington Mutual bank in Wisconsin recently issued a Press Release stating that almost half a million dollar of unclaimed funds are lying with it, waiting to be claimed by the rightful owner.
“The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation closed the bank in September 2008. The FDIC then deposited about half a million dollars in Wisconsin’s unclaimed property account. The money belongs to customers who had accounts at the bank. There are about 8,300 accounts belong to Wisconsin customers. The state treasurer’s office says one account has more than $58,000 in it.”
Time and again, NAUPA (National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators) has emphasized the fact that almost $40 billion of unclaimed cash and property is lying in the coffers of state treasuries and other federal agencies, and this pile of lost money is getting bigger with each passing day. Increased mobility on the professional and residential front has resulted in a lot of relinquished and unaccounted financial accounts across all types of organizations; utility bills, bank accounts, Tax refunds, pension funds and other kinds of personal assets.
The outcome of these personal and professional half-measures is a large volume of unclaimed cash and property with virtually no claimant. 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.
In a statistical survey, it was estimated that almost 93% of the families in the U.S have some type of fund or property that is yet to be claimed. That explains the fact that almost $40 billion are being held up in various state and federal treasuries and who knows, it might reach the $100 billion mark very soon.
In fact, the rapidly growing volume of these unclaimed funds is becoming a major bureaucratic and logistical hazard for most of the state treasuries. Most of the state treasuries and federal authorities are taking practical and adequate measures to resolve this problem of unclaimed funds.
