Dormant Assets Scheme

(asked on 30th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much money has he claimed through the Dormant Assets Scheme in the last calendar year.


Answered by
John Glen Portrait
John Glen
Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
This question was answered on 25th April 2022

The UK Dormant Assets Scheme is led by the financial services industry and initiatives across the UK whilst protecting the original asset owner’s right to reclaim. Assets that are classed as dormant always remain the property of their owners, who can reclaim money owed to them in full at any time. Dormant account funds are transferred to an authorised reclaim fund, Reclaim Fund Ltd (RFL) which retains enough funds to meet any future reclaims, and then distributes the surplus funding onwards to The National Lottery Community Fund to be used for public benefit.

In April 2021, RFL became a Treasury-owned arm’s length body, but it remains financially and operationally separate from HM Treasury. Dormant account funds do not ever enter the Treasury and the Government does not have access to dormant monies that are transferred into the Dormant Assets Scheme. RFL received £127 million of dormant balance transfers in 2021, taking total amounts received by RFL since it commenced operations in 2011 to over £1.5 billion.

The Dormant Assets Act 2022 delivers on the Government's commitment to expand the Scheme, potentially unlocking a further £880 million over the coming years. It enables a wider range of dormant assets to be transferred into the Scheme from the insurance and pensions; investment and wealth management (including orphan monies attributable to collective scheme investments); and securities sectors.

The decision on what new assets are included in the future will depend on a number of factors, including: identifying asset classes with high instances of dormancy; setting the dormancy definitions for such assets, and how restitution would be achieved. It would also be important to consider whether other mechanisms for dealing with dormancy already exist. Any further expansion will require the same close collaboration between Government, an authorised reclaim fund, and industry that has supported this phase of expansion.

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