£50m in Scottish Widows payouts unclaimed

Published on Saturday 2 January 2010 16:48

A DECADE after members voted for demutualisation, thousands of Scottish Widows policy holders have yet to claim payouts totalling almost £50 million.

Around 1.6 million policyholders qualified for a windfall when the Edinburgh based group demutualised in 2000 when it was taken over by Lloyds TSB, after winning member approval in December 1999.

But, Scotland on Sunday can reveal, 24,000 policyholders have yet to claim payouts which average 2,081. One policyholder is owed more than 84,000.

Those yet to claim their payouts have until March to do so. After that all unclaimed funds will be added to the Scottish Widows with profits fund.

Scottish Widows is still seeking the policyholders using unclaimed asset specialist ProSearch. Graeme Hartop, managing director of Scottish Widows Bank, said: "Scottish Widows is actively continuing its tracing activities."

The group believes some policyholders will have died or moved away. Others will have taken out their investments up to 20 years ago and may have forgotten that they had a qualifying policy.

And a few individuals who accumulated Scottish Widows policies through company pensions may not be aware they had a qualifying policy at any point.

It is thought financial assets worth more than 15 billion lies unclaimed in UK institutions, including forgotten pension funds.