Reclaiming money in a dormant account

Lost and forgotten building society and bank accounts hold millions of pounds of savers' money. If you think you have a dormant account there are a number of ways to track down your cash.

Banks and building society accounts

If your account has been inactive for a long time your account provider should write to you to ask if you want it to remain open. If it gets no response - perhaps because the letters are going to an old address - it will stop sending letters and statements and class the account as dormant. However, your money will be safe and waiting for you to reclaim it.

If you have a passbook or details of the account and where it is held you should contact the provider directly. Some banks have forms on their websites for you to fill in and reclaim your money. The more account details you have the better your chance of being quickly reunited with your money.

Savers who don't know which bank or building society their account is held with, or who currently owns the organisation, can use a central search set up by the British Bankers' Association (BBA), the Building Societies Association, and National Savings and Investments (NS&I).

Their mylostaccount.org.uk website lets you search across all banks and building societies, including those that have merged. Again, the more information you have the better your chances of retrieving your money. If an account is found you will need to provide ID before you can withdraw your money.

If you can't find the bank or building society you are looking for on the mylostaccount site, you should call the BBA's dormant accounts unit on 020 7216 8909.

Searches can take up to three months to complete, so be patient.

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.

Unclaimed assets scheme

Under a government scheme to be introduced in 2009, money that has sat untouched in bank and building society accounts for at least 15 years will be taken into a central account. The money will then be distributed alongside lottery fund money.

However, savers will still be able to reclaim this cash if they later realise that some of it is theirs.