2011 Proved More Successful in Unclaimed Money Returns

2011 turned out to be a great year for unclaimed money returns. The credit for this success goes to the enormous amount of effort and resources that were put towards the awareness programs of unclaimed property and money by various agencies. Although the statistics coming from published reports and government reports claiming rapid growth in the pile of unclaimed assets signified a slow start in the beginning of the year, by the end of 2011 the numbers of returns made were significant.

When the year 2011 started, almost all of the state and federal agencies published reports stating that the pile of unclaimed money are growing quickly day-by-day. Moreover, with many awareness programs conducted for increasing knowledge among the people and persuading them to conduct unclaimed money search, it was difficult to find any practical solution to manage the rising pile of money with the government.

The federal and state databases for unclaimed funds were increasing at an alarming rate, raising a concern among the authorities. In the beginning of the year, the state of California reported that it was sitting on nearly $6 billion in unclaimed money, while the New York had a soaring pile of $10 billon. Moreover, many non-governmental institutions like insurance companies and banks also witnessed a deluge of unclaimed money, with lots of unclaimed bank balances with them.

However, with the increase in proactive and revolutionary steps taken by the state governments to return the unclaimed property or assets to their respective owners, the overall volume of claims made by the end of the year 2011 saw a significant improvement than previous years. The NAUPA (National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators) did not leave any stone unturned to help the state treasuries and federal authorities and gave them all sorts of tactical and logistical support to conduct awareness programs related to unclaimed money search. The state agencies even partook in state fairs and other gatherings and put up stalls providing information about unclaimed funds along with telling people about the various ways to claim their money or property.

Despite all these efforts and even after a considerable increase in the unclaimed money returns in the year 2011, the pile of unclaimed funds with the states is still huge. Although there are a number of reasons behind the rising pile of unclaimed funds, the main reason contributing to it is the increased mobility of the people, both professionally as well as residentially. With more and more people relocating, a lot of abandoned and unaccounted financial accounts can be found at various establishments and may include unclaimed funds in the form of bank accounts, utility bills, pension funds tax refunds, and other forms of personal assets.

Going by the statistics accumulated from the survey done in the United States, nearly 93 percent of the families have some form of unclaimed property or fund waiting for them. This means that even after the successful unclaimed money returns in the year 2011, we can still expect around billions of dollars to be in the custody of various state and federal treasuries, waiting to reunite with their rightful owners.