Banking experts estimate that up to 5bn may be sitting unclaimed in UK bank accounts that have gone ‘dormant’. What does this mean, and could you be entitled to a share in this huge amount of idle money?
A bank account goes dormant when, in the words of the British Bankers’ Association, a bank and a customer ‘lose touch with each other’. What this usually means in practice is that a customer has either passed away or moved house, and the bank haven’t been told and are unable to locate the account holder some time later.
If there are no transactions on an account over a period of around 12 months, the bank will write to the account holder at the last known address to ask them if they wish to keep the account open. If no reply is received, then the bank will change the status of the account to ‘dormant’. This means that from now on, no statements, chequebooks or other correspondance will be sent out to the customer.
The money in the account will still earn interest at whatever the normal rate of that account is, and the bank will still keep track of the account balance and keep a record of the last known address...