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Owners of billions in unclaimed assets sought
What you need to know:
- The authority has a mandate to search for the legal owners of the assets or their heirs and the locations of the deceased. The information is then made available on the website for public use.
- Recent reports state that the bulk of unclaimed assets is associated with people who died without a will or without disclosing their financial status to family members.
- A survey by the Unclaimed Property Asset Register found that banks and insurance companies are the major holders of idle funds, estimated at Sh200 billion.
An estimated Sh3.26 billion is lying idle in unclaimed financial assets.
Unclaimed Financial Assets Authority (UFAA) CEO Kellen Kariuki said nobody has turned up to claim the amount, adding that people must come for their money.
“Only Sh32 million has been claimed so far, we collected Sh3.3 billion, we are now carrying out awareness and sensitisation measures to ensure beneficiaries collect the money,” said Ms Kariuki.
Recent reports state that the bulk of unclaimed assets is associated with people who died without a will or without disclosing their financial status to family members.
The authority claims that unclaimed assets are under-reported by the holding institutions surveyed. This is because non-financial assets such as land and other physical properties are excluded while government agencies end up not reporting unclaimed assets at all.
A survey by the Unclaimed Property Asset Register found that banks and insurance companies are the major holders of idle funds, estimated at Sh200 billion.
60 COMPANIES
Ms Kariuki said that so far 60 companies have complied by passing over the unclaimed funds to the UFAA.
Pension funds and listed companies also hold much of the unclaimed funds.
The money currently held by the UFAA was collected from banks, telecommunication firms, listed companies and insurance firms.
The authority has a mandate to search for the legal owners of the assets or their heirs and the locations of the deceased. The information is then made available to the public on a website.
The UFAA said KCB topped the banking sector with the most unclaimed remittances, at Sh700 million, while Safaricom’s M-Pesa topped the telecom sector, surrendering Sh196 million.
