TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida's Chief Financial Officer is urging adults to check the state's unclaimed property website as the state continues to hold a billion dollars in unclaimed property that belongs to residents.
Last month the state set a record, returning $32 million in cash and property.
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Another $100 million in unpaid life insurance benefits is being added. Settlements with 23 companies and a bill on the governor’s desk force the remaining companies to search for beneficiaries when no claim has been made, something few have done before.
"It’s the right thing to do," said Unclaimed Property Bureau Chief Walter Graham. "It belongs to them. It’s their money. It was paid for by someone who intended them to have it at a time when they wouldn’t even be around."
Companies that haven't settled voluntarily will be required to search back 25 years and turn proceeds over to the state if they can’t find a beneficiary.
"They know these individuals have died," said Florida CFO Jeff Atwater. "They sat on the data. They put it in a back drawer. They believed for 20 years they could get away with this. They earned hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and they had the gall to go to committee meetings and say, 'Let us keep it.'"
Searching for unclaimed property is easy and free. Residents can go to this site, enter their name and a security code to see if they are owed money or treasure.
"If they don’t know about it, they’re never going to claim it and it's just going to go," Graham said. "Benefits that were paid for never got home to where they belong and benefits that were paid for will go unclaimed."
The legislation forcing companies to search for beneficiaries will affect about 40 percent of the policies written in Florida. The rest are already covered under voluntary settlements with the state.