Every year, we mislay £11bn - and some may be yours

We work hard to earn money. We invest it as wisely as we can and hope that it will grow. Then we lose track of it and eventually forget it forever. That may sound absurd, but it is a common reality. British investors mislay an estimated £11.4bn in savings and assets each year. Many assume the money is gone for good. But, for those willing to undertake a personal treasure hunt, there can be massive rewards.

We work hard to earn money. We invest it as wisely as we can and hope that it will grow. Then we lose track of it and eventually forget it forever. That may sound absurd, but it is a common reality. British investors mislay an estimated £11.4bn in savings and assets each year. Many assume the money is gone for good. But, for those willing to undertake a personal treasure hunt, there can be massive rewards.

Tracey McKenna, 36, of Essex, was recently reunited with a pension worth £15,000. She says: "I thought I remembered some one mentioning a pension fund that had been set up for me when I worked for the Royal Bank of Canada as a treasury clerk. I left that job to raise my children and only years later thought about checking if my suspicions were true."

Mrs McKenna paid a company to search of her former employer's records. They found she was entitled to the pension. "It was non-contributory, so all the money came from the company," she says. "I had only a suspicion it existed and no idea of its value."

A study by National Savings & Investments found one in seven people who move home lose touch with their savings and investments. The amounts are not small change. National Savings estimates that for every person who moved home last year, an average £16,090 of savings and investment lost contact with its owner.

Not only home-movers can be estranged from their assets. People who have changed jobs, have lost paperwork or have had relatives die or fall prey to memory-damaging illnesses are all prone to losing touch with money.

The Unclaimed Assets Register (UAR), which manages a data base of lost assets, says there is at least £15bn worth of assets permanently unclaimed in financial institutions around the country.

About £5bn of that is in dormant savings accounts, £3bn in unclaimed shares and dividends, and a similar amount in pension funds and National Savings accounts. And NS&I says it has £22.7m in unclaimed premium bond prizes on its books.

Keith Hollender, UAR's managing director, says: "We have about four million records of lost assets and we suspect we are just scraping the surface."

Under UK law, almost all financial assets remain the property of that individual, no matter how long they have been unclaimed. The exception is company dividends, which can be reabsorbed by a company after 12 years. Where a person has die, those assets become part of their estate and can be claimed by an heir.

The good news is that tracking assets is usually easy and can be done with minimal cost. If an asset is held by a specific company or past employer, contacting that organisation with proof of identification should yield a result. Do not worry if you do not have a record of the asset; your name and address, or past addresses, will be enough to complete a search.

By law, companies must give you access to any records they have that relate to you. They may charge a small bookkeeping fee. If the assets are held under a dead relative's name, proof of a person's right to the assets will be needed before a search can be made. Accountants and lawyers for dead relatives are an excellent source of information to track lost assets.

If you think you may be entitled to lost premium bonds or National Savings certificates, you are in luck. National Savings operates a free assets-tracing service. A former fund manager, Martin Lister, 53, of Wimbledon in south London, used this service to find certificates in his mother's name.

He says: "My mother was ill and I thought I had better try to sort out her affairs. I suspected she had some National Savings, though I couldn't find any evidence of them. I completed a form for the search, which I had picked up from the post office, and within a few days they had traced investments dating back 30 years that were now worth £3,700."

If you have no clues where lost assets may be or suspect you may have a lost fortune just waiting to be claimed, but have no idea what form it might take,you still have a chance of finding it.

The UAR collects records of unclaimed assets from member financial providers. Some 85 per cent of life companies have submitted their records, as well as a smaller percentage of occupational pensions funds, listed companies and investment funds.

A standard search by the UAR costs £18, and a search of occupational pension schemes will cost £35. The UAR claims a success rate of about one in six. Mr Hollender says: "The best result we know of is a find of £83,000. The money belonged to a woman who was in a nursing home, so it was very welcome. Our smallest find to date is 92p, but we find even where the amounts are small or we don't find anything, people are relieved to know they have all the money that is rightfully theirs."

Experts say much of the money lying unclaimed will never be reunited with its owners. Much belongs to people who have died leaving no record of their investments for heirs to trace.

But much of it is has been simply forgotten or estranged as a result of circumstances. It would be a pity if that portion never made it home to its rightful owners.

INFORMATION

*To request a search of the National Saving & Investment records call 0845 964 5000 for a brochure or download the form from their website on www.nsandi.com. Searches can take a month

*The UAR has a list of companies registered with its database. They can be found at www.uar.co.uk or by writing to The Unclaimed Assets Register, Leconfield House, Curzon Street London. W1J 5JA. Tel: 0870 241 1713.