Lloyds TSB set to play Cilla in Reunification Drive
Writes Dan Drage dan.drage@consumerchoices.co.uk
One of Britain’s leading banks has pledged to reunite 120,000 stranded savings accounts with their owners.
Approximately £69 million is sitting in Lloyds TSB (www.lloydstsb.com) savings accounts, commercial accounts and current accounts left untouched for up to 15 years.
Lloyds TSB intend to reunite these neglected funds with their rightful owners, appointing search specialists Tracesmart to track down the potential recipients. The average amount Lloyds TSB hopes to return to each owner is £575, with one in ten accounts having a balance in excess of £1000.
Helen Weir, Group Executive Director at Lloyds TSB, furnished us with these details:
|
"Lloyds TSB will trace the addresses and contact owners of inactive accounts with balances over £100"
|
“These accounts have been long forgotten and our aim is to reunite as many customers as possible with their cash. As customers change address, open multiple accounts and their circumstances change, despite our best efforts to keep in touch it's surprisingly easy for them to lose track”
She continues:
“This is why we have taken action and appointed a specialist search agency to help us locate the rightful owners.”
Over the summer months, Lloyds TSB will trace the addresses and contact owners of inactive accounts with balances over £100. If the balance exceeds £1000 and an address cannot be confirmed from this initial search, the bank will employ a series of increasingly sophisticated electronic tracing techniques, and in some cases, manual search methods to find the correct address.
In the case of deceased customers, the bank will contact the executor of the will.
Once the address is confirmed, the bank will write to customers asking them to come in to any Lloyds TSB branch to identify themselves and claim their funds.
Chris Eagle, Commercial Manager at Credit Choices, welcomes this initiative:
“A high street bank proactively attempting to reunite customers with their money? Something of a rarity in this credit crunch driven, death of free banking age”
He continues:
“Moves such as these should help to repair banks’ tarnished image in the eyes of the public, and I hope there are many of you receiving good news letters from Lloyds TSB soon.”
| 
