Consultation on dormant bank accounts launched

The Government has launched a consultation document on secondary legislation to establish a UK dormant accounts scheme.

Subject to responses, the Government will introduce the secondary legislation in Parliament later this year.

Many people forget about, or lose track of, small deposits of money in bank and building society accounts. Despite the efforts of banks and building societies to reunite these funds with their owners, they build up as unclaimed assets in the banking system.

The consultation document sets out draft secondary legislation to extend the scope of the Financial Services Authority's regulation to include dormant accounts reclaim funds. It also places a requirement on building societies participating in the scheme for smaller institutions to publicly disclose information in line with the requirements placed on smaller banks by the Act.

Ian Pearson, Economic Secretary to the Treasury said: "The Government is committed to carefully investing this unclaimed money back into society, while making sure that people can retrieve money they may have forgotten that they had. I want to welcome this consultation as a step towards delivering a scheme that is fair for bank account holders while benefiting good causes right across the UK."