'Missing' Scottish Widows members still to claim £70m

Published on Thursday 17 September 2009 22:05

MORE than 30,000 Scottish Widows policyholders eligible for a collective £70 million in pay-outs when the group demutualised nearly a decade ago have yet to claim their cash.

Some 1.6 million members qualified for a windfall when the group, then known as the Scottish Widows Fund & Life Assurance Society, demutualised in March 2000 and became part of the Lloyds TSB group.

Of the 86,000 members who failed to claim pay-outs, Scottish Widows has tracked down some 51,700, but 33,900 policyholders have yet to come forward.

The unpaid sum of 70.1m gives an average pay-out of 2,070, with the biggest single windfall totalling 102,645.

Even qualifying members who held only non with-profits policies are eligible for a minimum amount of 600.

Graeme Hartop, managing director of Scottish Widows Bank, identified three possible reasons why policyholders had not claimed their money.

Some may have moved to a new address without informing Scottish Widows of the change.

In addition, said Hartop, those who took out their policies 15 or 20 years ago and paid in a lump sum may have forgotten that they have had a qualifying policy.

Another reason is that people who picked up Scottish Widows policies because their company pension scheme at the time was through the company may not realise that they held a qualifying policy.

Hartop added: "In all cases we may have written to these customers either at their current or previous address.

"These final 'missing' policyholders possibly ignored the letter, or left it aside to deal with it later and never got round to it. In the case of the latter, we are still receiving forms today that we issued over a year ago."

Scottish Widows has attempted to trace policyholders using the Department of Work and Pensions and data companies, including Experian and Equifax. It has now hired unclaimed asset specialist ProSearch in its effort to repatriate funds.

The deadline for claiming pay-outs expires in March 2010, at which point Scottish Widows said the unclaimed funds would be added to its with-profits fund for the benefit of with-profits policyholders as a whole.

&#149 Policyholders who believe that they may be due a pay-out arising from the 2000 demutualisation can visit www.scottishwidows.co.uk/unclaimed or call 0845 845 0829 for further details.