One billion remains unclaimed

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If you’re a little short on cash these days — you’ll want to pay close attention to this next story. You might find it hard to believe — but there’s nearly one billion dollars worth of unclaimed property in Canada — waiting to be reunited with unsuspecting rightful owners. But here’s the thing — if you have a dormant account you’ve forgotten about and live in Ontario — there is no law requiring companies to try to connect you with your cash. The province has some catching up to do when it comes to unclaimed property legislation.

“What do you see in there?” “Money.”

It’s too bad Canadians can’t be magically transported to their long-forgotten assets like in “Now You See Me.” Because if it were possible, they’d find close to a billion dollars in unclaimed property.

Debbie Zumoff is with the Unclaimed Property Professionlas Organization: “That’s being held collectively by the provincial government’s now that have unclaimed property in their regime as well as the Bank of Canada.”

Unclaimed property professionals organization president Debbie Zumoff says there are many different reasons why a person may not know they have unclaimed assets. It can be as simple as moving and forgetting to change your address: “Or people die. Often times without a will, without a plan, without a trust for your family members to know where you’ve squirreled away assets.”

The B.C., Alberta and Quebec governments have rules that require companies to transfer unclaimed property, like a brokerage account to the province, for the government to hold until the owners make a claim.

In Ontario, there currently is no unclaimed property legislation as the province repealed the 1990 Unclaimed Intangible Property Act. But that could soon change.

Chairman of the Toronto Task Force for the Association, Darren Jack says Ontario legislation is now under review. And there is potentially a lot of money to be collected: “It could be anywhere from 100’s of millions to 1 or 2 billion dollars. It’s entirely dependant upon how broad and how open that legislation is going to cover.”

Jack says it’s commonly thought about 1 in 10 people have a dormant asset somewhere that’s collectable.

The U.S. Says there is about 100 million in assets that have been escheated and not yet claimed over a population of 350 million. So that’s 1 in 3 or 1 in 4.

So that number could be much higher.

So how can a government reunite you with your money if you don’t know it exists? In B.C., for example, they look at driver’s licence records to see if you’ve moved. Regulated governments also make accounts available for you to search and, if you find something that belongs to you, you can make a claim.