Stake your claim

By STEPHEN WOMACK
Updated:

 

THOUSANDS of former members of Birmingham Midshires building society have been given three months to claim windfalls worth a total of £16m.

The unclaimed windfalls arise from the takeover of Midshires by Halifax three years ago.

Now nearly 26,000 former members have been warned to claim the money by 25 July or risk losing it. The windfalls are in two categories. Savers were entitled to cash handouts worth an average £1,000 each. Rights to about 6,800 unclaimed payments will lapse unless the savers or their heirs contact Halifax before the deadline.

Mortgage customers were each entitled to 400 preference shares, a holding now worth just under £400. Halifax says 19,000 Midshires borrowers have not claimed. If the shares are not claimed before the deadline, Halifax will sell them. The proceeds, plus unclaimed dividends worth £73.50 per customer, will be banked. The money can be claimed for a further nine years, but it will earn no interest.

To claim, call 01902 325914 or click here.

Halifax itself has unclaimed windfalls worth £295m from its demutualisation in 1997. It estimates that 135,000 former members have not come forward. The bank sold the unclaimed shares last year and put the proceeds, plus unclaimed dividends, in a no-interest account where they will sit for another eight years. To claim, call 0870 702 0102.

Other former mutuals, too, have thousands of unclaimed windfalls. Alliance & Leicester, for example, has about 67,000, each worth £1,550. They can be claimed for another seven years. Contact A&L on 0870 900 7700 or click here.

And insurer Norwich Union is still looking for nearly 61,000 former members who are entitled to windfalls worth an average £1,426 each. Call 0870 600 3952 to claim.

Windfalls can be tracked via the Unclaimed Assets Register. This is a database of unclaimed cash worth hundreds of millions, including lost shares, pensions, life policies and windfalls.

Managing director Keith Hollender says: 'We now have details of unclaimed windfalls from Scottish Widows and Friends Provident as well as insurance policies that have matured without being paid out.'

But Hollender has had a struggle to get details of all former demutualisations on to his system. He says: 'Some firms are keener than others. If windfalls go unclaimed for long enough, the money falls back into the corporate coffers.'

A general search costs £15. Call 0870 241 1713 or click here.

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