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One-stop website to make lost legacies easier to find

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 7 Feb 2008

Charities should find it easier to find lost legacies that are due to them thanks to the launch of a one-stop-shop website containing details of all bank, building society and National Savings accounts.

www.mylostaccount.org.uk brings together three different account-tracing services that until now have been run separately by the British Bankers Association, the Building Societies Association and National Savings & Investments.

It aims to reunite account-holders with money they may have lost or forgotten about. The industry estimates there is around £1bn lying dormant in old accounts that people have either forgotten they have, or have not been traced following an account-holder’s death. 

Once the money has lain untouched for 15 years it can be transferred to the new reclaim fund being established to create a new income stream for charities.

The website aims to reunite people with monies due to them before it is transferred to the reclaim fund – though people will still be able to get their hands on money that is legitimately theirs even after 15 years has lapsed.

The existence of the new website, which is being publicised through newspaper and online advertisements, is expected to make it easier for charities to get their hands on ‘lost’ legacies that may have been bequeathed to them but have been difficult to obtain due to poor records of the legator’s accounts.

Paul Chisnall, executive director of the British Bankers Association, said: “One of the concerns charities have brought to us is that some executors haven’t been searching as thoroughly as they could and legacies aren’t being collected in full.

“With this new website, even where the charity is not the executor of the will, it will still be an indirect beneficiary of the ability on the part of the executor to chase lost accounts better. And where the charity is the executor, it can use the service itself to look for accounts.”

The system will not allow blanket-searches of every bank and building society. The executor of the will must have a reasonable belief that an account exists in the person’s name and then they will be expected to choose some key criteria to search, such as a geographical region.

The initiative is an effort by the banking industry to stave off legislation to create a mandatory public register of all dormant accounts.

Chisnall said: “What the new Dormant Accounts Bill doesn’t do is introduce a public register of accounts, because we don’t believe that when people open up an account with a UK institution, that they expect to find their name on a public register before long.”

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