Woman reunited with missing $2400 after four years
Published: July 30, 2007
A FORGOTTEN bank account gave one woman a surprise when she was reunited with £1,200 ($2400) she thought she had lost.
Gwen Iveson of St Mary’s Mount, Leyburn, North Yorkshire, put £1,200 she inherited in a savings account four years ago. But when the 22-year-old tried to gain access to the money, she could not remember which bank she had used.
The panic-stricken care worker wrote to a number of banks and building societies to find the whereabouts of the money, before she discovered the National Savings and Investments tracer service.
She said: “I knew it must be somewhere, but I just didn’t know where.”
Three months later, National Savings and Investments got back in touch and told her the missing money was safe with them.
Miss Iveson said she was delighted to be reunited with her money. She said: “It was a fabulous service and without it, I wouldn’t have got my money back.”
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Miss Iveson is one of 43,000 customers of National Savings and Investments who have been reunited with £42m since the launch of the tracing service in 2001.
But they hope the launch of a campaign will reunite even more people with lost money.
With £435m remaining unclaimed, bank bosses are urging anyone unsure of the whereabouts of their money to use their free service.
Peter Cornish, of National Savings and Investments, said: “We want to help reunite as many people as possible with savings they have forgotten they had invested with us.
“We have launched an advertising campaign to jog as many memories as possible.”
The most common reason people lose track of their accounts is moving home without transferring their address.
Others forget about accounts that were opened for them as children. And unless executors are aware that a deceased person has accounts, the money may become forgotten.
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