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There's £15bn sitting in 'lost' bank accounts & one of them might be yours

You might be a millionaire

There's £15bn sitting in 'lost' bank accounts & one of them might be yours
11 April 2017

How rich have you got to be to forget an entire bank account, do you reckon? Like: how little do you have to care about how much money you have to forget an ENTIRE BIG POT OF MONEY?

I feel like the answer should probably be “quite rich”, but apparently not: people are forgetting bank accounts left, right and centre, according to Money Saving Expert.

They say that there’s around “£850 million in old bank and building society accounts” and a further “£15 billion” in premium bonds, investments, pensions and insurance policies that people have forgotten.

And a government report tells the tale of one man who found nearly £40,000 in a pension fund he’d forgotten, which seems pretty careless if you ask me.

Never fear, though: if you’re worried you, too, may have somehow forgotten fifty grand or something, there’s now a way of finding out.

The British Bankers’ Association, the Building Societies Association and National Savings & Investments have set up “My Lost Account”, a service that lets you track down lost money.

“mylostaccount.org.uk brings together the three tracing schemes of BBA, BSA and NS&I into a single website,” the website reads.

“This means that anyone with a 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 you have to do is fill out an online form – you’ll hear back within about 12 weeks, apparently. Drinks are on you, eh?