‘HSBC brings smiles to 5000 faces’
September 14, 2009 at 2:40 pm
In the last twelve months HSBC has brought a smile to the faces of 5,000 customers who have been “reunited” with money which they had forgotten about. The campaign, launched last September, has focused on 40,000 savings and current accounts which contain a massive £38.8 million and which have not been active since 1994.
It may seem hard to believe that people could forget that they have these accounts but, according to Brendan Cook of HSBC, money can lie in dormant accounts for a number of different reasons.
Often when people die, accounts do not come to the attention of the administrator. As well as that, accounts with small amounts of savings are forgotten about and large sums are often just left to be used in an emergency.
With some 35,000 accounts still waiting to be “claimed” by the owners and with an average of £1,000 in each, there are a lot of people out there who could find themselves with a welcome windfall.
Under new legislation to be introduced later this year, money in accounts which have been dormant for 15 years will be able to be used by the government for social programmes, although it will be returned to the account holder should they contact their bank at any time.
If you think you may have money in a dormant account you should contact your bank with as much information as possible, including any previous addresses, the name of the branch at which the account was opened, the approximate date on which the account was last used and a rough idea of the amount in the account.
If you have details of the account, you can get further information on how to claim it here.
