Pile up of unclaimed assets spurs calls for new law

Experience indicates that only about 25 to 40 per cent of the unclaimed assets are eventually reunited with owners.

New forms of branchless banking using the mobile phone have opened other avenues of accumulating unclaimed assets.

At the moment, there is no mechanism in place through which one can claim money held in an M-Pesa or Zap account incase of death.

“M-Pesa is yet again a new player in the market that’s going to be accumulating unclaimed assets,” said Mr Ngigi.

Holders of the assets periodically post them in the media, which UPAR collects and keeps in a data base.

Since 1992, about 20 financial institutions have collapsed leaving billions of shillings in unclaimed financial assets locked up in the Deposit Protection Fund, which covers bank customers’ deposits to a maximum of Sh100,000 per account.

“Billions of shillings are lost in unclaimed assets, where the same could form additional income for the government and probably invested as infrastructure bonds,” said Amoyo Andibo, a research analyst at UPAR.