Around 40,000 people in the UK may be in for a nice surprise as UK insurance firm Norwich Union is planning to reunite people with unclaimed assets. Chief executive, Mark Hodges, says: “This is our customers’ money and we are quite simply asking them to come collect what is theirs.”

The money is tied up in life and pension schemes which could date back to the 1950s and may be held in companies which merged with the insurer and its subsidiaries.

The list of these includes CGU, Commercial Union, General Accident, Hibernian, London & Edinburgh Insurance Group, North British & Mercantile Insurance Company, Provident Mutual, Scottish Union and the Yorkshire Insurance Company.

Earlier this year it established a ‘Find the fisherman’ campaign, through which it reunited around 4,000 fishermen with almost £2.5 million. Norwich Union now hopes to use the same methods for these other customers whose assets appear to have been forgotten.

“Unclaimed assets are common across the whole industry. Yes, it’s very surprising that people should lose track of so much money, but we strongly believe that all companies should be taking steps to get this money back to its rightful owners,” says Mr Hodges.

“We had great success earlier in the year finding many fishermen who were entitled to claim a pension,“ he adds, “we learned a great deal from this and we are able to use the knowledge we gained to create the robust processes we are employing now.”

Find out more about Norwich Union pensions

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