Our policy on unclaimed assets

Read our policy statement on Unclaimed Assets here.

A significant proportion of Cancer Research UK's annual income comes from money that people kindly leave us in their Wills. Last year alone, the charity received £157 million in this way.

However, we know that people sometimes have certain financial assets, for example, small amounts of money in bank accounts, which they have forgotten about over the years. When the owner of an asset fails to communicate with the holder of the asset (e.g. the bank) for fifteen years, the asset is then classed as 'unclaimed'.

We believe that the majority of such assets will have belonged to deceased people. When a person dies leaving a Will, and the Executor of that Will and/or the person's next of kin do not know about these assets, they will not be included in the deceased's estate. This means that members of the public and charities are losing out on money that is rightfully theirs.

The Dormant Accounts Act came into force in 2009 and gave provision for these assets to be redistributed via the Government's Big Society Bank. However, we believe that more should be done to help reunite lost accounts with their rightful owners before they are eligible for redistribution. Cancer Research UK, along with the Unclaimed Assets Charity Coalition (UACC), is calling on the Government to do more to encourage banks to actively reunite people with their dormant accounts. In addition we would like the Government to implement a UK wide mandatory register for unclaimed assets, which is easily searchable by charities and members of the public.