Lost Accounts: Banks, Building Societies & National Savings

Lost, Dormant & Forgotten Accounts

Banks and Building Societies hold millions in dormant accounts money that people have forgotten about. Accounts are classified as dormant when no transactions have been made for a prolonged period or correspondence is returned as undeliverable.

This FREE service is brought to you by the British Bankers Association, the Building Societies Association and National Savings and Investments (NS&I), who have launched a joint venture, My Lost Account to replace separate account tracing tools. Use this to find lost current accounts, savings accounts or premium bonds.

mylostaccount.org.uk brings together the three tracing schemes of BBA, BSA and NS&I into a single website. This means that anyone with a dormant or lost account with a bank, a building society, NS&I – or all three – can initiate a search simply by visiting this website and completing only one application form.

All three provide comprehensive coverage of their respective areas:

• The BBA scheme covers 42 banks that take retail deposits in the UK
• The BSA scheme covers all 59 UK building societies
• The NS&I scheme covers all National Savings and Investments products as well as the old Post Office Savings Bank accounts.

See mylostaccount here

National Savings & Investments

You can go direct to NS&I and use its tracing service, or use the mylostaccount site to search for lost accounts. Both services cover accounts bought from NS&I and the old Post Office Savings Bank accounts, as well as missing Premium Bonds.

However, if you know your Premium Bond numbers but do not know if you have unclaimed prizes you should check if you have won on the NS&I website.

As long as you have some information or documentation - for example, the holder's number, the holder's card or the Bond itself - you won't need to complete a tracing request form to claim your lost prize.

Pensions

The government's Pension Service will track down your missing occupational or personal pension schemes. You can just give the name of your previous employer or pension scheme provider, but the more information you can provide the more likely you are to be successful. A full name and address for the scheme or employer, and details of when you were a member, will help.

Investments and insurance policies

Unless you know the name of the company from which it was bought, the easiest way to trace a lost life insurance policy is to pay a search service. The Association of British Insurers suggests using the Unclaimed Assets Register, as many of its members register unclaimed policies with the site.

For £18 a search it will trawl its database of unclaimed life policies, pensions, unit trust holdings and share dividends. You can search online for policies held in your own name, but if you want to search for policies held in someone else's name - for example a deceased parent - you will need to print off the form and post it.